chevymeister

So we are talking about human instinct now?

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Kryten

Haha! Sounds like a plan does that.

Have you tried Last.fm?

They're going to be offering an unlimited streaming service for around about 8 major labels almost entire catalogue.

I'm personally not that interested until they release a Last.fm for mobile format, then I can stream any music I want from their site on my mobile devices. But the whole thing is good.


The only problem with then signing on with a lot of labels is the yearly subscription hiked from £18 to £36, which is double and pretty much out of the question (to say this streaming services isn't included)



EDIT:

DSL "broadband" can get out. It's not real broadband at all. Cable for the win.

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AntiTalent

They say upto the cost of a couple albums a month, so yeah ~ £20.

But it's virgin, so if you get your tv/phone/broadband/robotic pet weasel from them I'm sure you could get a reasonable bundle deal. Though the more labels they sign up, that price could start to creep upwards...

Not sure about the poor person comment though. I see chavs about spanking £35 a month on an iPhone contract, 1/5 their JSA - I guess it depends on what you think is decent value or not. Personally my internet is too crap to bother with torrenting, W7-RC took me 19hours Wish I was in a cabled area.

ATM, downloading = easier/cheaper than buying it. That's as much as I want to say without getting dragged into a piracy argument.

EDIT: Not tried last.fm no. might check it out.
Back on Topic:
I'd sign up for a short time, to sort out my back catalogues and nothing more. I'd rather choose which 2 albums I buy every month though, sometimes there's nothing but bilge out there so I dislike the idea of being locked in. Plus, I like album sleeves.

Is £20-25 per month a reasonable price to pay on top of your broadband for unlimited access to music? With a bundle deal let's call it £15. For me, no. I won't take this offer up, unless it's more like 5-10 a month, and I get a wicked audio setup to pump music through my house (airport?)

Kryten

Personally, no. I wouldn't pay it.

I don't buy music every month so this isn't worth it for me. Also, there's the fact that this isn't in a multitude of formats. Some people prefer AAC, others prefer FLAC, the rest have no idea what they're doing and will settle for mp3.

And finally, I enjoy getting music for free before I pay for it. Call me whatever you want (because I really, really don't care) but this model works for me and I don't need a new one confusing things. I spend money on albums that are relevant to me.

Also, I'm slightly against this, because I feel it places validation on the existing music industry model that record labels get to dictate a lot about music. I'd prefer a Radiohead style business to move in and destroy the outdated piece of crap we've had the last 50 years. (for any record you with to add this to, I paid £10 for Radiohead's last album, after saying I wasn't paying anything first)

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Ulquiorra

not wanting to start a flame war but what diference does the file mormat make? if the data is therethen the file size means nothing :s

Also this is a step in the right direction

As long as they dont have there version of unlimited which would have a cap,buy this service once in every 6 months or soo all music got legaly xD, also it depends on what, would they have my anime music :P?

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AntiTalent

The file format can matter in the fidelity of the track
1.MP3 is a broad term, the quality could be naff, and generally worse than a CD.
2. FLAC is actually lossless- so should be a perfect replication of a CD track.

Personally I can't tell the difference - because I have cheapo speakers anyway, so not fussed, so long as the mp3's >192kbps I'm happy. Another issue is whether your mobile music player/phone/ipod supports the file types you want. MP3's pretty much become the standard, but you can get flac support in some cases/firmware flashes.


I've been trying to find albums worth spending money on through spotify, but might have to put off some purchases to get inFamous. Everyone would run out to the shops to buy music if HMV hired prettier girls. FACT

Kryten

The format makes a whole lot of difference.

Think of bandwidth. You can fit less information into 192kbs, than you can 1000+kbs.

Meaning you lose clarity with transcoded, poorly encoded and low bitrate files.

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ElMikeTheMike

So because it lacks FLAC, a format a majority of regular users aren't familiar with and one that's not often supported by players, it's fail? I disagree.

The reason it's fail is because you have to pay for it. It doesnt matter how good the service is or isn't...so long as you have to pay for it, people are still going to download their music illegally.

If these companies ever want to do away with piracy, they have to go after the file sharing networks and that's really the bottom line.

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Ulquiorra

true, but i though hq (320kbs sort of) mp3's only dropped the bands which were unhearabale, well thats what we were taught xD

back on topic 2 things
but it (Virgin)said it could be comparable to the cost of a couple of albums a month.< -__-

at at the moment its only universal and they are hoping to get other on bord

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Kryten

It's fail because it only supports MP3, as though MP3 was the be all and end all of music formats.

This personally is of no use to me because:

1) I don't own a single CD produced by Universal (you conveniently forgot that when you were insinuating things, Mike) I personally don't see Cult of Luna, or Opeth, signing up to Universal anytime soon. Perhaps if Roadrunner or Earache Records signed up this would be extremely appealing to me.

2) I have my entire music collection of 40+ albums in FLAC. I prefer songs in FLAC, because I use headphones primarily for listening to music and I'm fortunately enough to be able to hear the difference.

As more of a side note, I have Last.fm and I now use that instead of pirating music. I can pretty much use that to tell whether I'll like a band or CD before marching my butt to the shops/e-bay to buy the CD and subsequently, rip it to my PC. In the rare event that Last.fm doesn't include the band I'm looking for, then I have no choice but to download it from places first (unless, of course, you're a complete idiot and you think buyng it on whim is a choice)


Nice attempt to undermine my reasons, Mike. But you'll have to go back to the drawing board and plot some other diabolical post.

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