[CUBE] itunes 4-Where to now?

Hal kastegir at mac.com
Thu May 1 10:33:17 PDT 2003


On Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 09:22 AM, Sean Terrill wrote:

> Quoth Joost van de Griek (joost at jvdg.net) at 5/1/03 5:58:
>
>> On 2003-05-01 09:30, Sean Terrill wrote:
>>
>>> Quoth SnowWhite (jj4 at sympatico.ca) at 4/30/03 11:58:
>>>
>>>> I think music stores are in deep trouble now.  They will need to 
>>>> fill niches
>>>> that on-line does not cover. But that begs the question-Is server 
>>>> storage
>>>> and
>>>> bandwidth cheaper than a physical location and is it able to cover 
>>>> the
>>>> niches
>>>> more effectively. I think Apple definately has an advantage with 
>>>> server
>>>> space.
>>>
>>> Possible, but I doubt it. The technology to deliver online books has 
>>> been
>>> around for a decade but book stores are still doing just fine, 
>>> because there
>>> are people who prefer the old medium.
>>
>> But books != music. There are distinct reasons why, with books, some 
>> (most)
>> people prefer the old medium; you hold it in your hands to use it. 
>> With
>> music, the medium is irrelevant; as long as the music is coming from 
>> the
>> speakers, who cares what the medium is?
>
> But there are advantages to CDs as well. Some people enjoy having the 
> liner
> notes/lyrics/whatever that come with the CD. A CD is inherently 
> portable
> (not everyone has an MP3 player) and a very common standard (almost
> everyone, even if they don't have a PC, can play CDs; a computer or 
> other
> MP3 player is harder to find and a AAC player even harder). No 
> compressed
> format will ever truly have CD quality either, so hardcore audiophiles 
> will
> probably continue to buy CDs until the technology catches up to their
> expectations. My point in all this is that the medium still makes a 
> huge
> difference in how you listen to music.
>
This is an interesting point. A good friend of mine owns a DJ company 
and is also a Mac fanatic (I admit, I infected him). When he upgraded 
to OSX, he began using iTunes to manage his music library. He 
subscribes to a service that sends him discs every week with the latest 
singles (some are pre-release). When he burned his music back to mixed 
CDs for use, he found that tracks that had been encoded at less than 
256 sounded terrible when run over his PA systems at significant 
volumes. That seems to be the minimum threshold for audiophiles. 
Personally, I encode at 192-256, depending on the genre...

-Hal



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