Bleep & Coke
Looking to get a slice of the pie already being enjoyed by iTunes Music Store, two new sites have launched offering music downloads, with distinctly different approaches.
My Coke Music, run by er... Coke, allows access to 250,000 tracks at 80p each and features artists such as Kings of Leon, Sugababes and Stereophonics (if thatís your bag). One noticeable feature of My Coke Music is that the songs are distributed in WMA format, which is incompatible with the markets leading digital music player, the Apple iPod. Iím afraid thatís all I know about the site just now, as it failed to appear in Safari after sitting through the annoying Flash intro movie. Obviously thereís still some technical glitches to iron out.
Bleep is Warp Recordsí attempt at making the majority of their back catalogue available as digital downloads. Individual tracks are priced at 99p each and most of the albums are available for £6.99. The tracks are encoded as high quality 205kbps MP3ís, avoiding any DRM issues and making them playable throughout any digital music player or computer. As the FAQ on the site states :
We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals ó DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music. Finally, buying music through Bleep means that you are supporting the artists work, and in some cases you are getting MP3ís encoded by the artists themselves. After the bandwidth charges and Bleep running costs are subtracted, the artist gets half of the album or track price.
Of course, Bleep is targeted at a much smaller audience than Coke Music, but I applaud the decisions theyíve made and hope other record labels and companies follow suit.
Posted 8 years ago
Great. So if you want music by groups you’ve actually heard of you have to use WMA. As you said, their Web site doesn’t even work unless you’re part of the Microsoft collective.
And if you want music in any other format it has to be in MP3 which is past its prime.
Roll on iTMS UK.
Tommy · www · 8 years ago
I’m disposable-income-challenged (!) but ethical re. copyright, so I download freely available legal MP3s from epitonic.com - though when I have some spare cash I shall head right over to bleep. Aphex, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada are up there in the fave artists list...
Tim · www · 8 years ago
I just downloaded a Boards of Canada album from Bleep, which came through as a 90 MB zip file. It unzipped as individual tracks properly ID3 tagged and with the album cover attached. Although not as good as AAC, the MP3 quality is very good.
Admittedly, Warp don’t have many popular or mainstream artists, but they deserve praise for the simplicity of the system and support for artists and consumers.
I can imagine they must’ve had to make some tough decisions on file format. AAC is great for iTMS but presents problems for Windows users (and they were trying to avoid DRM issues), and WMA is pretty much the opposite - so I guess MP3 was the only alternative they had.
Phil · www · 8 years ago
Magnatune’s another label that has its head screwed on when it comes to selling music over the web. Not only do the artists get half of the buying price, you get to choose how much you want to pay for the album based on how much you think the artist deserves. Obviously, there’s a lower limit, but I think it’s something like $5.
http://www.magnatune.com/
Mal · www · 8 years ago
Anyway, what’s wrong with MP3? Sounds great to me. No different to CD quality.
Mal · www · 8 years ago
"Anyway, what’s wrong with MP3? Sounds great to me. No different to CD quality."
It depends on (a) the encoded bitrate, and (b) what you’re listening to it through.
For the vast majority of people (whose CD-listening experience isn’t a Linn Sondek played through an Audionote Ongaku), there’s no noticable difference between MP3 and CD. Not that CD is all that - there’s already information missing, unlike vinyl ;)
Tim · www · 8 years ago
Ah. I guess my £5 headphones aren’t quite up to it. :)
Mal · www · 8 years ago
You can get a half-decent pair of headphones for about £20, though:
http://www.richersounds.com/index.php?f=itemdetl.php&p=205386
I wasn’t trying to suggest that I had such an expensive CD/Amp setup - I have a Technics CD player that I found at the local tip and a 20-year old Pioneer amp. Does the job though!
Cheers.
Tim · www · 8 years ago
"AAC is great for iTMS but presents problems for Windows users (and they were trying to avoid DRM issues)"
AAC has no DRM by default. AACs with the .m4a extension are unprotected like MP3s except they have all the sound quality benefits MPEG-4 Audio brings. AACs with the .m4p extension are the protected files. They cause a problem because there is no open standard for DRM, as everyone is finding out with Real’s music store which will also use AAC.
"Anyway, what’s wrong with MP3? Sounds great to me. No different to CD quality."
MP3 is a good format but has had its day, around 3652 days. ;)
The problem for me with MP3 is the loss of high and low end frequencies. You’ll only notice this if you’ve got some good quality headphones/speakers and music which exploits those frequencies. At the moment I’ve got some Bose speakers hooked up to my PowerMac. So I notice. ;)
The one thing that no one can criticize MP3 for is the fact that it is ubiquitous. AAC support outside of iTunes and Winamp is limited, but it’s better than WMA which is only seriously supported on Windows.
Tommy · www · 8 years ago
kool
bobby · 7 years ago