Lossless Music Store

Bandcamp

2011-06-25T08:46:00.001-07:00

Along with HDTracks, Bandcamp is the leading online store when it comes to buy music in a lossless format. They specialize in "indie" music, but the catalog has a wide range of artists.

Since it's the St-Jean Batiste in Québec, I bought the album "Les chemins de verre" by the band Karkwa. It's not a brand new release, it's been available for over a year, but I've heard the song "Marie tu pleures" on the public radio and it has been on my purchase list for a long time. Lovely track, it reminds me of the mood of the Elephant 6 crew and I just bought my tickets to see Jeff Magnum [of Neutral Milk Hotel] at the Pop Montreal festival, so I was in the perfect state of mind it hear this.

Not many french artists are available outside iTunes. Most of the local labels don't offer a lossless purchase. Even a MP3 download is rare. It's nice to see that a big label, Audiogram, distribute their music on Bandcamp.

The album cost 12$, it's the same price no mather the format you choose. On iTunes it's 8$, so that fixed price make the MP3 pricy, but the FLAC format is cheaper than the CD version.

Once the payment is completed [I use PayPal], you are redirected to the download link.

It you use iTunes, you can follow my step-by-step guide to convert the FLAC into Apple Lossless format.

A note on how to find music you like on Bancamp

Since a lot of unsigned and little known bands are using Bandcamp, a nice place to discover them is the the blog Crawdaddy. They feature a Bandcamp band of the week.

Good read: How The Music Industry Is Killing Music And Blaming The Fans

2011-05-27T08:08:00.001-07:00

A nice article on the music business.

While the industry continues to blame illegal downloading for its financial woes, it’s musicians who are paying the price while being forced to work harder than ever. But label inertia means culture itself is at stake, and even democracy could suffer, argues

Thanks to @barnabef for sharing this article.

Some Rolling Stones albums on HDTracks

2011-03-08T14:48:00.001-08:00

HDTracks appears to be on a roll lately. They just added some Rolling Stones releases to their super high definition catalog. It's available in either 88khz or 176khz (both 24bit). This is a very good news and hopefully we will continue to see new high profile offerings in the future.

Here's what Teri Landi from ABKCO has to say about the remastering:

"Many years of research went into locating the original mono and stereo analog tapes that would be used in ABKCO's Rolling Stones Remastered Series. That research revealed a treasure trove of first generation tapes - true stereo masters from The Stones' 1964 Chess Studios sessions including the unedited version of "2120 South Michigan Avenue," Beggar's Banquet at its correct speed and Let It Bleed with splicing that indicates that the original intention was to leave little spacing between each cut.

For the analog to digital transfers, vintage reel-to-reel tape machines were utilized - a modified Ampex 351 with original tube electronics (full track mono and two track stereo) and an Ampex ATR-102 modified with Aria Discrete Class-A Electronics (full track mono and two track stereo). A Sonoma DSD digital audio workstation was the chosen high resolution format and Meitner Design ADC8 and DAC8 MKlV converters were used for the conversion process. Cables used were the cryogenically frozen type supplied to us by Gus Skinas of Super Audio Center. Gus also provided much guidance to Jody Klein, Steve Rosenthal and myself for our first time use of DSD technology. For this HD Tracks release, the Bob Ludwig mastered DSD files were converted to both 176.4kHz and 88.2kHz high resolution PCM with Weiss Saracon conversion software."

Right now the following albums are available: The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones No 2, 12 x 5, Big Hits and Through The Past Darkly.

Favourites like Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet should be available in spring or summer. This is the full list of upcomming releases:

Out Of Our Heads | December's Children | Aftermath (US) | Let It Bleed | Out Of Our Heads (UK) | Aftermath (UK) | Between The Buttons (UK) | Beggar's Banquet | The 60's UK EPs - The Rolling Stones/Five By Five/Got Live | Singles Collection | Between The Buttons (US) | Flowers | Their Satanic Majesties Request | Metamorphosis | Got Live If You Want It! | Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! | Big Hits (UK) | Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits, Vol 2) (UK) | Hot Rocks | More Hot Rocks | The Rolling Stones (US) | The Rolling Stones Now

The 88khz are 19.98$ and the 176khz are 29.98$. (You can use the coupon code STONES10 for a 10% off)

You might want to read the overview of HDtracks I did back in january.

Will iTunes sell lossless music?

2011-02-22T13:10:00.001-08:00

This is a promising article from CNN: Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads.

Apple and other digital music retailers are in discussions with record labels to improve the quality of the song files they sell, executives involved in the talks say.
As a result, online music stores could eventually offer songs that sound truer to their original recordings, perhaps at a premium price.

For example iTunes could offer an audio format in 24bit. iTunes and Macs can play Apple Lossless in 24bit, but the portable devices can't (yet). I also believe the Apple Airport Express downgrade the music from 24bit to 16bit, as mentioned on the Apple discussion forum.

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

2011-02-14T15:05:00.001-08:00

A new Radiohead album! This saturday! Well that's a pleasant surprise.

Not much is known about the new album, but you can preorder it in WAV format here: http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/

Convert FLAC to Apple Lossless on a Mac

2011-01-29T08:29:00.001-08:00

If you want to use iTunes to store your lossless library, your music collection must be in the Apple Lossless format. Since most of the online music stores use the FLAC format, you need to convert the files you download. This process doesn't reduce the quality of the audio, it's simply a switch between compression formats. It's similar to converting a ZIP file to a GZIP archive. Same data, different algorithms.

For this task I've been using XLD for many years. It was first released in 2006 and over the time the developer added audio formats compatibility and features like ripping CDs. Today I'll focus on converting a FLAC to Apple Lossless.

XLD supports the following lossless formats: FLAC, WAV, WAV64, AIFF, PCM, WavPack and Apple Lossless.

First, you need to edit the preferences. In the general tab you must specify Apple Lossless as the output format.

The Apple Lossless format only has one option, the sample rate. The default is "same as original" and this is what I'm using.

I prefer to select an output directory myself to avoid mixing the original files with the converted files. It makes it easier to import into iTunes. Output name format is arbitrary and somewhat irrelevant to the task since iTunes will organize the music directory itself.

The next important tab is batch.

Preserve directory structure is recommended to avoid name collision in the output folder. I choose unlimited directory depth so XLD will crawl and convert every audio files it finds in the input folder(s).

Last tab important for conversion is metadata.

I leave everything to the default values. It can be a hit-or-miss since there is no established standard. For example the cover image is not always included and the image name can obviously change. You will want to adapt the settings to the online music store you most frequently use.

You are now ready to import. I keep the XLD application in the dock so I can simply drag the FLAC folder (or any of the other supported format) to the XLD icon. The conversion immediately begins. If you have a multi-core computer it's possible to decode many files simultaneously. This setting is located in the general tab (maximum # threads). This will speed up the process.

Once the conversion is completed, you drag the output folder to iTunes and voilà. If iTunes manages the music library itself, you can trash the output folder created by XLD.

Merge Records

2011-01-25T15:12:00.001-08:00

With the release of the new destroyer album, Kaputt, I should point out that every new Merge records are available to buy in FLAC on the label website.

Oh, and it scored 8.8 on Pitchfork.

Zunior

2011-01-23T08:58:00.001-08:00

Zunior is a online music store focused on canadian artists.

Zunior.com is a small team led by Dave Ullrich out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dave is a musician, developer, and music lover that started Zunior.com as a way to sell music directly from artists to their supporters. The site builds on Ullrich's experience as the manager of The Inbreds independent label, PF Records, and on his current experience working as a developer and promoter of open source software.

They offer albums in MP3 or in lossless FLAC. Albums sells for 10.88$ (8.88$ plus 2$ extra for the FLAC edition). This is taxable for Canadian residents; with the GST the total of the purchase is 11.42$. I was looking for the Montreal band Braids first release, and Zunior has it in their vast catalog.

At checkout you need to log in to your account, or create one if you're a new customer. If it's the case, check your email upon account creation, the welcome message include a coupon code for a dollar off the first purchase.

Payment by credit card or PayPal [I selected PayPal]. Once the payment is completed you are redirected to the website where you can download the music. Zunior has a download manager, but it's also possible to directly download one zip file containing all the FLACs. I find this option more convenient than having a download manager for every online store!

The download includes the album's cover in JPEG and the booklet in PDF.

I should also note that it's possible to download the purchase later by logging back into your account.

Search digital audio stores

2011-01-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

In the comments of my post about HDTracks, a reader mentions a a search tool he created: the Digital audio store Google search. It's a great idea, from this page you can search all the online music stores at once.

As an example, if I search for the new Braids album, the first result is the release in FLAC at the Zunior store. Exactly what I'm looking for.

Another random example, I search for Sufjan Stevens and once again the first search result points to The Age Of Adz available in FLAC on his Band Camp page.

Unfortunately it's not a "hole in one" for every search. For example, the Jazz side of the moon album, which I bought on HDtracks, doesn't show up in the results. HDTracks is probably not indexed by the custom search.

Finally, what's missing is a friendly URL. http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=014240413029755198024:0lxj6ikvhca makes it impossible to navigate to without a bookmark.

Thanks for the tip, Andrew. It will be very useful for my searches, and hopefully, helpful to others too!

Twitter

2011-01-22T07:33:00.001-08:00

You can now follow this blog on Twitter as @losslessstore. Start a discussion, send me tips and feedback!

HDtracks

2011-01-12T14:15:00.001-08:00

I've decided to give HDtracks a try. Since I wan't looking for anything in particular, I started with the top 25 best sellers section. In third position is "Jazz side of the moon, the music of Pink Floyd". Sounds cheesy but the critics on Amazon are good and this youtube sample is not bad at all. Intriguing. This will be the first album I buy on HDtracks.

This is an example of an album available at the highest quality: 192khz/24bit. In this case, you have the choice of three levels of quality (and price):

192khz/24bit FLAC files for 26.96$, separate tracks for 2.98$
96khz/24bit FLAC files for 17.98$, separate tracks for 2.49$
Regular CD format 44.1khz/16bit AIFF or FLAC files for 11.98$, separate tracks for 1.49$

The checkout process is painless. You can select to pay by credit card or PayPal. [I choose PayPal]

One the payment is completed, the browser redirects to a page where a Download Manager is automatically downloaded on my computer. It uses Java, so I guess it's the only software requirement. Once started, you need to enter your HDtracks user/password before the download can start.

The download manager has a limited interface, there's not a lot of information available. The size of the download don't even shows.

The download was a whooping 2.46GB, every 192khz FLAC file weight about 300MB. That's a lot of data!

In addition to the audio files, HDtracks provide a PDF of the entire CD booklet and a small JPEG of the album cover.

It's now time to listen. In a follow-up post I'll detail how to listen to 192khz on a Mac computer.

Yeasayer - Live at Ancienne Belgique

2011-01-10T16:11:00.001-08:00

There's a good critic of the new Yeasayer release on Pitchfork today. The live album is available for download on their website for a "name your price" amount. You can get it for free or you can pay either 0.99$, 2.99$, 4.99$, 7.99$ or 9.99$. You decide. Available in FLAC or Apple Lossless.

Girl Talk - All Day

2011-01-09T14:25:00.001-08:00

Today in the New York Times magazine there is an article about Girl Talk. His most recent album, All day, is available for free on his label website, Illegal Art. You can download the 484MB FLAC format here in either one big song or in separate tracks.

Two CD players for your lossless collection

2011-01-09T07:23:00.000-08:00

It's 2011, and while nothing really happened on the lossless audio front, I should still make an effort to keep the blog alive. You knows, maybe this year we will be able to buy lossless music on the iTunes store!

In the meantime, here's two great CD players with a nice twist: a digital input. You can use their high-end DAC chip to listen to your lossless music stored on your computer, while still being able to enjoy a CD once in a while with the same device.

NAD C565BEE

As I've always own british music gear (Part of my current setup are a Creek amplifier and a Rega turntable), the NAD C565BEE is certainly on the radar for 2011. It features a Wolfson WM8741 DAC chip compatible with sample rates up to 192khz (/24bit). It has 2 inputs: a optical SPDIF and a USB connector for USB memory sticks. The optical input is more practical in my opinion as you can directly connect a computer (every Macs have an optical output) or an Apple Airport Express wireless router (with Airplay).

The retail price of this CD player is 799$. Spearit sound also sells refurbished units for 599$. The canadian retail price is 1000$.

Marantz SA8004

The SA8004 CD player has just been released and has about the same specifications of the previous SA8003 model. The DAC chip is a Cirrus Logic CS4398, a chip on the same level of performance as the NAD's WM8741. The chip might be about the same, but the Marantz features more input options: an optical SDPIF, a coaxial and 2 USB connectors. The USB connector on the front is used for memory sticks but what's nice is the USB on the back is used to connect the player to a computer.

The retail price is 999$ (Amazon). 1199$ in Canada.

A friend of mine own this CD player and he is very satisfied with the performance of the unit.

The BQE

2009-12-05T15:31:00.000-08:00

Good news! Asthmatic Kitty Records is offering a voucher to download the FLAC digital version of a vinyl album. In this case, I had the opportunity to grab Sufjan Stevens' The BQE.

Christophe, je suis collabo et terroriste

2009-09-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

Voici un article de blog intéressant qui reprend l'idée que je défendais dans l'entrée initiale de ce blog: http://www.newwavehooker.com/2009/09/christophe-je-suis-collabo-et.html

Matador's Buy Early Get Now

2009-07-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

The new Yo La Tengo, Popular songs, is available through Matador store feature "Buy Now Get Early". Preorder the album and get immediate access to two songs from the new album in FLAC - Periodically triple or double & Here To Fall.

Later in august the album will be available online as a stream. Exclusive MP3s will be offered and the physical album will come with a bonus album, the soundtrack to the movie Adventureland. You get a poster too! It's all mentioned here.

Thanks to OMG Vinyl for the tip.

Zunior

2009-07-04T11:15:00.001-07:00

It's time for a first FLAC purchase on Zunior: The Phenomenal Handclap band for 10.88$. I've already wasted my money on the iTunes album but a CD-quality version was needed. Songs like Testimony really shine with those FLACs!

The process is really smooth. As soon as the credit card is validated you can download the files. No download managed needed.

Zunior is probably the best lossless online store for indie music, while Boomkat, Bleep and others focus on electronic music. They are the cheapest option too.

Music is here

2009-06-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

I found a lossless music store that I didn't know about: Music Is Here.You can download everything in FLAC and albums sell for around 10 to 12$. The catalogue seems to be a hit-or-miss. For example they carry XL recordings like Thom Yorke but not Radiohead.

Somehow some albums are not available in every country. For example I can't get Gotan Project's La revancha del tango. Odd!

Dirty Projector - Bitte Orca

2009-06-09T13:23:00.001-07:00

Like other Domino Records releases, this album will be available in WAV on the Domino online store. (Unfortunately for some reason it's not available on the release day). And don't hold your breath for a great deal, like other Domino WAV releases, there's a "delivery surcharge" of 5$ over the MP3 version. So except to see a 15$ price tag. Way too expensive. Get the vinyl - it comes with a voucher allowing you to download the WAV files for free.

In the meantime, read the Pitchfork review!

St. Vincent - Actor

2009-05-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

4AD (Beggars Group USA) is selling Actor on FLAC for 10$.

Unfortunately, you can only download the MP3 version when you buy the vinyl.

Blue Note vinyl reissue series

2009-04-27T14:12:00.001-07:00

I just bought a Blue Note record: Kenny Burrell Midnight Blue. It's part of a reissue series that includes many jazz classic like Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage. All the vinyls come with a CD copy of the album.

Some time ago I saw a copy at the downtown Montreal Archambault but it was overpriced (as one might except). Today I did some shopping at L'oblique and found this vinyl (with CD) for 19.99$. They also carry other records of the reissue series.

Strangely enough this release isn't available on Amazon.

-- Post From My iPhone

Metric

2009-04-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting article on Metric in the LA Times. They released their new album Fantasies without a record label, instead pushing on digital purchases and a Radiohead-like deluxe boxset. And best of all, it paid off.

Fantasies is available in MP3 and FLAC on their website "I Love Metric" for 8.99$ USD. Even better, get the vinyl with the digital download for 24.99$. You download the album in FLAC right now, the mailman delivers the vinyl a few days later. PERFECT.

The album is also available on Zunior, but it's more expensive (10.88$) with you want the FLAC version.

Record labels should be worried, very worried!

New Bob Dylan vinyl comes with CD

2009-04-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

As seen on Amazon, the new Bob Dylan vinyl will include a CD copy (with the same tracks). It's not a lossless digital version per se, you still have to rip it and... give the CD to a friend. It's a good deal nonetheless.

I also spotted a Jason Molina vinyl with a CD copy of the album. Released in 2004!

Boomkat

2009-04-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

Boomkat is an online store I discovered while reading Gizmodo's excellent How to discover music in 2009. It a British record store specialized in electronic / techno music, but they also have some rock records. They sell CDs and vinyls and lots of their titles are available in FLAC. Unfortunately, with the exchange rate, it can be quite expensive as they charge per tracks.

As one example favorable there's Mokira' Sueismine offered in FLAC for 3.95 British pounds. That's about 7$ CAD or 6$ USD.

A more expensive example would be Monk's Black Monk Time available at 8.95 British pounds. That's over 13$ USD.

With the pricing structure and with all the unknown artists it's a good place to discover new music and buy a few tracks here and there.

I'll give it a try for sure.

Lots of music-related posts on Gizmodo

2009-04-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

So it's "listening test" week at Gizmodo. There is a lot of interesting posts. It's a little off-topic to this blog, but still, here's a few articles that stands out:

The difference between 100$ and 100,000$ speakers

How to discover music in 2009. They mention a few online record store with lossless music offerings. I'll check it out!

Why we need audiophiles

Why analog audio cables really aren't all the same

Matador records

2009-04-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

You can buy music in the FLAC format on the Matador online store. They sell for 0.99$ each songs or 10$ for the album. Their lossy MP3 version sell for 0.80$ each or 8$ for an album.

This is a "good deal" considering this music is selling for the same price on the iTunes Store in a lossy format.

Unfortunately they don't offer the FLAC download with the voucher found in their vinyl records. To be honest, I'm not sure I would have downloaded the latest Yo La Tengo album, a garage record under the name Condo fuck, in a lossless format anyway ;)

Manage An All-Lossless Music Library With iTunes

2009-04-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

There's a good article on Gizmodo on how to manage a lossless iTunes library. I learned something new: if you have a Mac, like I do, you can use Fluke to play FLACs directly in iTunes. Currently I convert all the FLACs to the Apple lossless format with XLD. More on this later, I'll give Fluke a try. I'm curious to know if it works with Airtunes.

Update: Fluke crashed the first time I tried to import a FLAC album. Not looking good.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillon

2009-04-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

When i received this great vinyl album in January, it came with a voucher to download the digital version on Domino Records. To my surprises I could download it in WAV. This is the first record company that I know of who offers WAV download. Not only was it surprising to have the option to download in WAV but it had no additional charges too!

You can also buy WAV digital records on their online store. 10$ per album + an extra 5$ for a "WAV delivery surcharges". Suddenly it's not a good deal. At 15$ you're better off buying the CD, ripping it and selling it used on Amazon or your local record store.

The music itself is worth every penny. It scored a 9.6 on pitchfork and I couldn't agree more.

B&W Music Club

2009-04-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

This is one of the good reason to start this blog. B&W, the speaker company, has team with Peter Gabriel to create the B&W Music Club. The idea is great: you sign up for 12 months. It costs 60$ USD. Each month you can download a new album. That sums up to 5$ per album, a very good price. There's one downside: you can't choose. There's one album per month and that's the one you download.

You can also sign up for a free trial where you will be able to download a EP, a small selection of the songs available on the entire album. The trial is offered for 3 months.

Obviously Peter Gabriel's involvement caught my attention. He chooses the albums from his RealWorld catalog. This month it's Spiro "Live in Box". Based only on this album only, so I might be wrong, but it would appear that the B&W offers unreleased or digital only releases because I can't find it on Amazon. Since the point is to discover music, it doesn't really matter.

Download

You can download the album in three formats: Apple lossless, FLAC and FLAC 24bit [Apple doesn't support 24bit in its lossless format]. Pick the format you prefer, or download them all.

And 24bit FLACs, this is very interesting, specially for the anonymous audiophiles! It's also nice because suddenly your sound source is better than the CD. I had to do some research on how to take advantage of the 24bit FLACs and I will write on the subject in a subsequent post.

Personally I downloaded the Apple lossless for my iTunes library and iPhone. I also downloaded the 24bit FLAC for the simple fact that it's better and I have the required audio equipment to listen to 24bit music. Does it sounds any different? Probably not but that's not the point ;)

Click here to go to the B&W music club.

The picture used in this post comes from the link above.

The Lossless Music Store

2009-04-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

The CD is dead. It's a redundant medium with a better option on both the analog and digital worlds. The CD brought digital music to the masses, but with the internet and huge iTunes libraries, who cares now about the little plastic case and the small disc in it?

I love my vinyls for their large covers and the feeling of preciousness they give to the music. But this blog won't be about vinyls. Because for every vinyl I buy I want its digital copy.

This blog will cover the online legal availability of lossless music. It's a place far from perfection. The record labels are greedy, there is many formats and certainly no "on

e place to shop". I will obviously not try to find a new business model for the record labels. But I will give hints to available lossless music, online store reviews (if they exists), software, components (hardware) and any other reason to post something in here once in a while!

But what's wrong anyway?

Quality

So I want my music in a lossless format. Lossless means you lose nothing. I want to choose myself how I will use this digital copy. I'm listening music on my main system? I need lossless. I want to copy it on my iPhone? 256kps or 320kps please.

The current offer is very thin in this regard.

Most indie record labels offers a voucher to download a mp3 copy for their vinyl albums. Most large record companies have no vouchers. The iTunes store and Amazon sell music at 256kps.

With the rapid growth of storage and relative cheapness, along with fast internet access, there's no needs for compressed music.

Cost

iTunes sells sub-CD quality songs for 0.99$ (and now for as much as 1.29$). That's 10 to 12$ per albums. A product where there is now no physical item to produce, no inventory to maintain, no sell figures to estimate how many CDs to produce and no shipping. Don't you have the feeling of being ripped off? I'm sure it's not the artists who get all the extra money.

Availability

Where can I buy my lossless copy of the new Bod Dylan album? ........ nowhere that

's where.

Piracy

You can download it though! And probably before its release date too.

I pirate music. I mentioned that I buy vinyl albums. I currently

don't have a choice, if I want a lossless digital copy, of an album I already bought, I need to go for the torrents.

Other industries

Every problem faced by the lossless music seeker also exists in the film and television industries. Price, quality, availability, sinking business model...

In this blog, I will concentrate of what i love the most: music.

Out to go listen to the new Decemberists album!

Lossless Music Store

Bandcamp

A note on how to find music you like on Bancamp

Good read: How The Music Industry Is Killing Music And Blaming The Fans

Some Rolling Stones albums on HDTracks

Will iTunes sell lossless music?

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

Convert FLAC to Apple Lossless on a Mac

Merge Records

Zunior

Search digital audio stores

Twitter

HDtracks

Yeasayer - Live at Ancienne Belgique

Girl Talk - All Day

Two CD players for your lossless collection

NAD C565BEE

Marantz SA8004

The BQE

Christophe, je suis collabo et terroriste

Matador's Buy Early Get Now

Zunior

Music is here

Dirty Projector - Bitte Orca

St. Vincent - Actor

Blue Note vinyl reissue series

Metric

New Bob Dylan vinyl comes with CD

More interesting articles on Gizmodo

Boomkat

Lots of music-related posts on Gizmodo

Matador records

Manage An All-Lossless Music Library With iTunes

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillon

B&W Music Club

The Lossless Music Store