Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"If you're reading this you probably don't need much background on Amazon Cloud Player - suffice it to say that Amazon launched a new "freemium" cloud storage service that's tied into their music store. You get 5GB of online storage for free and 20GB if you buy an MP3 album from Amazon, and subsequent MP3 purchases don't count against the cap. There's also a Cloud Player app for Android that can play music files stored on your account - it doesn't matter if they're files you purchased from Amazon or elsewhere, and Amazon has tools that'll upload your DRM-free iTunes purchases to make a switch easy. None of this is particularly earth-shattering - as a loyal Amazon MP3 customer who's almost wholly switched to the subscription-based Rdio, I actually think most of these features are a couple years too late."

Nilay Patel shares some interesting thoughts on what's happened since Amazon launched their Cloud Player service - namely, that the music labels got upset. "How dare you listen to music you bought in any way other than via the hard drive that you downloaded it on"? is their basic message. How quaint. The record companies finally got wise and un-shackled our music from DRM - and I believe digital music sales are better than ever, partially because of that - and now they want to dictate how/when/where we listen to our music? I don't think so.

"Is iTunes still the most expensive digital music service? Which iTunes alternative offers the best deal for music lovers? Are digital albums a better deal than CDs? And just how much are you overpaying if you buy by the track instead of by the album? Those are the questions I set out to answer in this, the third installment of my "iTunes alternatives" series. My previous installments were in April 2009 and April 2010, and I had planned to wait until April of next year to revisit this turf. But so much has happened in the digital music space this year that I just couldn't wait. And there will probably be a whole new set of changes to look at by next April anyway."

Image Credit

Wondering how the likes of Amazon, Napster, Zune, and others stack up against iTunes in terms of pricing, availability, and other factors? Check out Ed Bott's article to find out more. Personally, I buy my MP3s from Amazon.com or HMV Digtial (in Canada) depending on who has the lower price. You?

I'm starting to see a pattern emerge with more frequency when it comes to physical CD prices versus digital downloads: the purely digital versions of songs, when packaged in album form, are more costly than the physical CD. It doesn't happen all the time, but today I found it twice: once, with the Lee Dewyze album shown above, and the Glee Volume 4 album. In both cases, the physical CD is $2 less. This makes me think that record companies are willing to make less profit on physical disc sales in order to prop up falling sales, but I wonder what it says about us as consumers - is it worth paying more for the instant gratification? Or is it more that buying a physical disc and ripping it is a hassle and it's easier to stick to being purely digital? I wish Amazon offered Amazon Prime in Canada, because then there'd be no shipping costs and I'd easily select the physical disc option every time.

What about you? Do you still prefer to own a physical CD, or is it worth it to pay slightly more in order to have the instant gratification of a physical download?

"There will be no judgment in this post. No sound snobbery. I'm simply asking the age-old question: At what bitrate should we encode MP3s? And I need your help. This test is occurring in two parts. In part one, I'm sampling three songs chosen from vastly different genres, encoded from CD and transcoded into the various popular bitrates available for MP3s (64k, 96, 128, 160, 192, 256, and 320kbps with VBR off). I tell you what I hear, then you sample the files yourself, and tell me what you hear."

There's an interesting test going on over at Gizmodo. Mark Wilson tried to determine the "sweet spot" for encoding MP3s in terms of bitrate. He performed the tests on three different genres of music and shared his conclusions. But more interesting, he's made the sound clips available for download and asked his readers to perform their own tests and share the results. Head over a give is a try!

I've played around with different bit rates and codecs over the years. I gave up on lower bit rates a couple years ago when hard drive storage really stopped being an issue and just decided to re-rip my CD collection in 320kbps MP3. And if I'm reading Mark Wilson's conclusions correctly, I should be safe, at least for a few more years. What bitrate and codec do you use?

"EBAY Australia has laid down the gauntlet to Apple's iTunes Store, becoming the world's first eBay auction site to sell new digital songs alongside secondhand CDs. The digital tracks, sold in unrestricted MP3 format, undercut the price of the leading digital music store by offering songs 10 cents cheaper, at $1.59 and albums $1 cheaper, at $15.99 than the Apple alternative, The Courier-Mail reported."

According to this article, "eBay Australia has laid down the gauntlet to Apple's iTunes Store..." That's not what the press release says. This appears to be one of those stories written to pull in readers. Much ado about nothing. Kind of like those 11:00 News promos that entice you to stay up too late. You know the ones: "Tap Water: The Silent Killer!" Like those promos, this article leaves out quite a bit of relevant information.

The truth is eBay Australia isn't selling digital music. They've partnered with Universal Music to update their Music category page to feature links to Universal's own digital music store. It doesn't seem to go much beyond that. You can search eBay Australia or search GetMusic, but not both at the same time. For example, Taylor Swift's album was highlighed on the Music page, but searching for Taylor Swift on eBay Australia didn't bring up anything about digital downloads. It's not an auction. It's not BuyItNow. Tracks are purchased through Universal's site, which requires a separate login.

It's just not that big of a deal. In fact, I've spent too much time writing this. Stop reading... move on....

"Some quick background: the promise of Spotify is music, on-demand, from any computer with an Internet connection. Which sounds a lot like Rhapsody, Napster, Microsoft's Zune Pass, or any other of the countless subscription-based services that have come and gone...except that there's a free ad-supported version. Sort of like what Qtrax was promising, only with streams instead of downloads (and actually available instead of merely promised). Or perhaps sort of like Imeem, only without the confusing attention-deficit-disorder interface. Or--let's be honest here--like all the dearly departed P2P services of yesteryear, only legal with partners including the four major labels plus independent digital distributors CD Baby and The Orchard."

Certainly attractive, but I'd really like to see some sort of off-line mode that would work with an MP3 player. This would be ideal for work, but would violate a lot of employer's Internet usage policy. Would be great fun for home use and for making the perfect mix.