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I went to buy some audio tracks today and when I went to add them to my basket I was give a choice between a standard MP3 format and a Flac format file. The MP3 file was 99p and the Flac file was £2.19. Now having only recently come across this format it did make me wonder what this was all about, so I Googled it. Ok, so now I know it's a higher quality audio file, that is a bit bigger in size than an MP3 file.

Has the music industry learnt nothing in all these years? This isn't the difference between producing a vinyl record and a CD or a DVD and BLU Ray, it's a sodding data file for crying out loud!!!

I realise that you may need to buy a more expensive audio player to listen to your Flac tracks whilst on the go. I also understand that the file a bit larger than a MP3 file, but surely nobody is going to use that as an excuse are they? It's not like all these digital stores have only 10TB of space so need to buy huge amounts of extra data storage. It's not even down to manpower, you just tell the PC to convert it and once done you have a master copy that can be duplicated as many times as you want.

Please tell me I'm missing something here? I mean they have just got it to the stage that a lot of people will pay for their music and they then do this!?!

There was a thing about this on the BBC tech-news program yesterday, and the upshot is basically that Flac files are pretty damn useless unless you are using real top-of-the-range speakers ect. So basically it's Emperor's New Clothes synrdome, and for the average user there is no tangible difference but for the price (Flac files have data imperceptible to human ears).

Basically, unless you happen to have the world's best sound system, save your money and buy an MP3 version (or even WAV, which is purportedly slightly better but not much larger)

The main use is for producers and DJs using the sound files and pieces thereof in new compositions. The FLAC filetype is mostly useless for the basic consumer, but for people who work in the industry, it is a much better format when you are trying to pull specific levels or voices out of an already mixed sound file. The excess cost is also not as big of a deal as the people who will be using this filetype are mostly having the cost paid for by their company or personal business music budget anyway.

I hate downloads. No case, no hard backup in lossless, no artwork and it's more expensive. The typical consumer is what made this happen. grrr

I struggle to buy CDs these days, they just aren't around much. Also how cool is having a collection!?

I have all my music in flac, while not as flexible as mp3 you do get superior quality and larger soundstages. Electronic music ain't to fussy, but instruments moreso.

£2 for what is essentially a CD quality track is a joke.

Sigh... so they are at it again then. What an outstanding idea this was. Let's make a 'premium' product that in fact isn't that 'premium', but we will talk it up so people will want to have it. We'll then charge a silly price for and then wonder why our customers just laugh and revert back to torrent sites.

I really, really, really do wonder what goes through their heads when they sign off on these ideas. I know you don't have to chose to buy them, but human nature will make people want them and human nature will make people refuse to pay that much for them, thus fuelling pirating again.

 Wolfstan wrote:
I went to buy some audio tracks today and when I went to add them to my basket I was give a choice between a standard MP3 format and a Flac format file. The MP3 file was 99p and the Flac file was £2.19. Now having only recently come across this format it did make me wonder what this was all about, so I Googled it. Ok, so now I know it's a higher quality audio file, that is a bit bigger in size than an MP3 file.

Has the music industry learnt nothing in all these years? This isn't the difference between producing a vinyl record and a CD or a DVD and BLU Ray, it's a sodding data file for crying out loud!!!

I realise that you may need to buy a more expensive audio player to listen to your Flac tracks whilst on the go. I also understand that the file a bit larger than a MP3 file, but surely nobody is going to use that as an excuse are they? It's not like all these digital stores have only 10TB of space so need to buy huge amounts of extra data storage. It's not even down to manpower, you just tell the PC to convert it and once done you have a master copy that can be duplicated as many times as you want.

Please tell me I'm missing something here? I mean they have just got it to the stage that a lot of people will pay for their music and they then do this!?!

You forgot to mention which part of the above you are actually outraged about.

 Wolfstan wrote:
Sigh... so they are at it again then. What an outstanding idea this was. Let's make a 'premium' product that in fact isn't that 'premium'

Just because you can't taste the difference between a chuck steak and a filet mignon doesn't make them the same thing.

Most of the music people listen to is encoded in a very, very lossy format - 160kbps. There is a lot of data being discarded there. If you get a 320kbps file, it's probably good enough. However, if you're an audiophile, you might want an exact, wholly lossless recording, and that is what a flac is.

I don't get music in flac because my ears aren't sensitive to justify it; I can barely perceive it and I'm just not that into music. However, they are completely different formats and flac is quantifiably better sound quality, even if it's a difference the average person can't perceive. It's simply not a matter of opinion that flac is a superior file format in terms of audio data delivered.

Is it worth more money? Well, it depends on the listener.

 eskimo wrote:
it's more expensive.

Huh? Over here, a new CD almost costs twice in retail of what it costs online.

 eskimo wrote:
I hate downloads. No case, no hard backup in lossless, no artwork and it's more expensive. The typical consumer is what made this happen. grrr

I struggle to buy CDs these days, they just aren't around much. Also how cool is having a collection!?

I have all my music in flac, while not as flexible as mp3 you do get superior quality and larger soundstages. Electronic music ain't to fussy, but instruments moreso.

£2 for what is essentially a CD quality track is a joke.

I completely agree (apart from the cost) about hard copies vs downloads. I refuse to buy songs (and especially movies) as digital files, it just doesn't have the same feel to it.

Personally, I've never knowingly heard anything in a Flac format, but neither have I heard anything ripped from the CD or digitally downloaded in MP3 format that I was unable to listen to for quality reasons.

Someone else, however, may think differently, and buy the Flac version.

Currently, there's nothing stopping me from simply ignoring the fact that a Flac version exists. It'll only really become irritating if, for whatever reason, the MP3 format is dropped in favour of Flac, but Flac stays just as expensive. So long as the choice exists, I don't see it as a problem; no more so than the choice existing to buy store-brand products over named-brand products.

Unless you have a speaker setup or Portable Player (of which there are few that do FLAC) with the right kind of headphones you wouldn't be likely to tell the difference.

 daedalus wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
I went to buy some audio tracks today and when I went to add them to my basket I was give a choice between a standard MP3 format and a Flac format file. The MP3 file was 99p and the Flac file was £2.19. Now having only recently come across this format it did make me wonder what this was all about, so I Googled it. Ok, so now I know it's a higher quality audio file, that is a bit bigger in size than an MP3 file.

Has the music industry learnt nothing in all these years? This isn't the difference between producing a vinyl record and a CD or a DVD and BLU Ray, it's a sodding data file for crying out loud!!!

I realise that you may need to buy a more expensive audio player to listen to your Flac tracks whilst on the go. I also understand that the file a bit larger than a MP3 file, but surely nobody is going to use that as an excuse are they? It's not like all these digital stores have only 10TB of space so need to buy huge amounts of extra data storage. It's not even down to manpower, you just tell the PC to convert it and once done you have a master copy that can be duplicated as many times as you want.

Please tell me I'm missing something here? I mean they have just got it to the stage that a lot of people will pay for their music and they then do this!?!

You forgot to mention which part of the above you are actually outraged about.

Sorry. It's the cost. How do you justify one audio data file being worth more than another. I can understand something like movies as there can be major data size differences, therefore a bigger need for storage space.

It's just quality and most won't even care about the difference.

People seem to be willing to pay the difference, so let 'em waste their money I say.

It's just a difference that will be useful to some because they can actually use that extra data. It's the difference between a .jpg and a RAW file, or PNG vs SVG. For the majority of users the "lower" format will always be enough, but for some the better format will give them a lot more options.

Of course there will also always be people that will pay a premium price for a "premium" product just because they can.

 Wolfstan wrote:

Sorry. It's the cost. How do you justify one audio data file being worth more than another. I can understand something like movies as there can be major data size differences, therefore a bigger need for storage space.

Oh, okay.

So, I'm no audiophile, but I do have some relevant knowledge. FLAC can be over an order of magnitude greater in file size than an MP3. Under the presumption that you are downloading an entire album, and not simply a track, that's gets up into a download being close in size to a movie rip. You have to consider storage space and bandwidth for that. And I mean, we're not talking about a gigabyte of space here, but we're also not talking about a massive price gap either. Really, you consider the price per bit, and you're paying far less for the FLAC still, not that this should ever be any valid comparison of anything.

You also have to take into account that generally an mp3 is "CD quality", so you're paying more for something better than what you used to get, which makes sense to someone, somewhere, I guess. Audiophiles are crazy too, so they have no problems paying more for the audio equivalent of a placebo. No, not that Placebo.

Ultimately, you also have to remember that this is an industry that treats it's customer base like criminals, hijacks their computers, and routinely abuses the creators of their own product. Why be surprised that they charge a higher price for a "better" product?