All the recent news of The Fabs imminent appearance on iTunes has promted me to do a little thinking about mp3 in general, and do a little research into cost comparisons. That, and I'm bored at home with a stinking cold!
First of all I can see the convenience value that it has - I want that song, and I want it now - download in seconds to your iPod, or whatever, great. You can imagine all the impulse buying going on - one touch purchasing, and so on. And they say gambling sites are bad! Anyway, fine for those thhat use iPods and the like. I and many others (still) do not use them. I work a bit from home, and when I'm not I don't really have time to be listening to music. Some folks don't have the capacity to play mp3's on their hi-fi's, so they'd have to convert the files to .aiff/wav, then burn them to CD, thereby losing more sound quality. It's starting to look less convenient.
I could connect my laptop to the hi-fi I suppose, but it doesn't sit anywhere near it and I haven't gone wireless yet. But then I'd be listening to mp3's through my hi-fi, and call me old fashioned, but I fail to see the point in that! I hae a DVD-Audio/SACD player for better sound quality, so why would I want to listen to mp3's on it?
Then there's the cost. If you buy your music on the net - which I almost exclusively do - there's really not much of a saving, if any at all. I just did a price comparison, and this is what I found. I've chosen a brand new album, and the last CD I bought:
Introducing Joss Stone:
iTunes: 7.99
Mp3. No cover or case
CD Wow: 7.99
Full music files. Cover and case. Free Delivery
Amazon Marketplace: 7.77
Full music files. Inc. delivery
XTC - Skylarking:
iTunes: 7.99
Mp3. No cover or case
CD Wow: 5.25
Full music files. Cover and case. Free Delivery
Amazon Marketplace: 7.00
Full music files. Inc. delivery
I might have to wait a week or so for delivery, but that's fine with me. And for that I get proper factory pressed CD's in a jewel case or digipack, or even a box if I'm lucky, with a booklet and cover. Now tell me why I should pay for mp3's?
I bought a DVD-Audio/SACD player because I wanted better soound quality. In these days of faster broadband connections and 500gb hard disk's isn't it time that the likes of iTunes started offering lossless files as well? Then we can all choose which format we want. And I can always convert them to mp3 easily if I want to.
Is it just me?