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Eye of Pod
We're on iTunes now, too. Does that mean we've "arrived"?
I feel obligated to point out that if you own a portable music player other than an iPod, odds are you won't be able to play those DRM-protected songs on it, while CDBaby provides unencumbered MP3s that will play on anything.
On the other hand, Apple is the only company that makes, or has ever made, a portable music player, so it doesn't matter, right?
I feel obligated to point out that if you own a portable music player other than an iPod, odds are you won't be able to play those DRM-protected songs on it, while CDBaby provides unencumbered MP3s that will play on anything.
On the other hand, Apple is the only company that makes, or has ever made, a portable music player, so it doesn't matter, right?
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Whether it's done that way, or whether it's done with a burn-and-rerip, it's all still transcoding, a procedure which has the drawback of re-lossy-compressing something that's already been lossy-compressed once, thus adding another layer of data compression artifacts (no matter how subtle) atop an existing layer of data compression artifacts.
I've often seen the act of transcoding push a file from "indistinguishable from the CD" right over that fuzzy line into "you can hear the compression artifacts" territory. Not only that, but it's a huge gigantic hassle to do any of that, and after all the hassle, what you get out the back end is something that's slightly worse than what you started with.
I'm pretty sure there are other programs which will strip the DRM off of the iTunes files without transcoding. The result in that case is an MPEG-4 file, not an MP3 file, which still won't play on many players besides iPods anyway, which as far as I'm concerned is pretty much the same thing as DRM to me; I'm still stuck transcoding it before the file becomes remotely useful to me.
What all of the above means to me is, I personally would rather buy an actual CD that can be my first generation non-lossy source and my physical backup. But when it comes to digital-only distribution, nothing beats having a well-encoded first-generation MP3 that I don't have to massage or transcode before I can play it on my not-an-iPod music player. That's why I approve of CDBaby's method so much.
On the other hand, if all you've got is an iPod, and all you ever want to do is play the songs on the same iPod (actually I think it's the same five iPods, but imagine a future when you've just bought your sixth next generation iPod device and suddenly can't play the song, but I digress) product, you can't beat iTunes for the purest and most hassle free experience in convenience and ease of purchasing. If you buy into their system, it's like a candy dispenser for songs it's so easy. You gotta hand it to 'em for getting that part right.
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Not that you probably care, since you don't do iTunes/iPods/whatever, but I felt compelled to clarify.
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Tying your purchase to a specific piece of playback hardware (or five specific pieces of hardware), regardless of whether or not you offer a remediation procedure in the event of hardware failure, goes against a lifetime of conditioning that's taught me to expect media that can be moved from player to player without having to untie it from a previous player.
Of course, digital distribution completely breaks the mold upon which that conditioning was based, so that conditioning is entirely inappropriate in today's world. Still hard to get around it. "These kids today" are growing up in a world where that sort of thing is commonplace and they probably won't mind it at all.