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BigPond Music Store Gets MP3s
Post by trog @ 10:12am 14/08/08 | 34 Comments
The BigPond Music Store now sells DRM-free MP3s, joining the likes of iTunes and Amazon in finally offering consumers a better alternative. You can check out the MP3 sitelet thing for a quick glance; while not every song in there is available as MP3 there's a lot that are - including some that aren't available on iTunes as MP3, which I thought was interesting. Last week I was looking for the new Grates album which was released recently; iTunes had it but it was DRM'ed so I didn't bother - BigPond Music actually have it available for purchase as MP3 now. At 320kbit/s, no less - not sure if everything is as good quality. Not bad for my first ever digital album purchase.

BigPond customers can log in directly with their BigPond accounts and have new music billed to their credit cards or added onto their monthly bill - they'll also get a discount.

Beware though - you can only download the songs once. After they're on your PC, if you need to download them again, you're paying again - so remember to back up. (Disclaimer: Mammoth Media, AusGamers parent company, developed most of the site.)











Latest Comments
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mongie
Posted 10:42am 14/8/08
Awesome, now we just need them to start selling DRM free lossless audio and I'll start buying!
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natslovR
Posted 10:57am 14/8/08
shame they don't track purchases so you can re-download at any time.

If they wanted to do something a little different they should look at letting you make ringtones from your purchased music like that Russian site does, great service
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jadz0r
Posted 11:22am 14/8/08
shame they don't track purchases so you can re-download at any time.


Once you have sucessfully purchased your album/tracks they go into a download queue type thang. So this means that you can buy an album at work, wait till you get home, login to your account and download your latest purchase :)

If you purchase WMA tracks you can click on 'Purchase History' and re-download at any time.

last edited by jadz0r at 11:22:51 14/Aug/08
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demon
Posted 11:25am 14/8/08
wavs plz! :P

although these commercial sites are unlikely to ever stock the sorta music i am into :/
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mongie
Posted 11:36am 14/8/08
demon - I was hoping for FLACS, but I'll take WAVs if I have to.
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trog
Posted 11:47am 14/8/08
I'd definitely take a 320kbit mp3 over a 50mbyte wav file pretty much any day of the week
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mongie
Posted 11:59am 14/8/08
I'd just say that 320Kbit MP3's show a lack of understanding of what the consumer wants. If its for people to use on their MP3 players - it should be VBR. Converting from 320kbit MP3 to V0 VBR (the highest quality in LAME) would probably give ~ 10% file size reduction with no noticable difference in sound quality.

Secondly, if they used FLAC for lossless, those 50MB WAV's that you don't like could be 15MB FLACs.
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Opec
Posted 12:38pm 14/8/08
Awesome, finally it's heading into the right direction. Just need more artist for DRM free MP3s in the store now
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dRanged
Posted 12:53pm 14/8/08
In my experience, some of the cheaper fraunhofer chipsets don't gracefully handle errors very well with VBR, anyway.

I think the bigger issue for the Telco is that when you stream VBR over say 3G 850, the bursty nature of VBR in non-optimal coverage areas means unreliable playback and is hard to charge for.

How carrier wireless networks handle QoS, for bursty traffic, I don't know. I doubt they'd prioritize general traffic at do-or-die levels, so they'd possibly have to allocate dead air time to cover the peaks ?

Maybe parabol could chime in?

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dRanged
Posted 12:58pm 14/8/08
This would be a pretty awesome thing for an iPhone on 850.

You could buy your album and stream it free over the network and have it sit right in your iTunes library.

But I dunno who would buy music on the go rather than just wait until home and buy on the all-you-can-eat DSL?

Might be good if you had like streaming access to a whole bunch of tunes
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VorusT
Posted 01:11pm 14/8/08
Sounds good, but I have been victim of losing music that's purchased and not backed up, sadly.

Sam
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taggs
Posted 01:13pm 14/8/08
most people would prefer 320kbps over .wav, but for production or use in apps like ableton the files have to be .wav so the option would be nice.

i'm in the same boat as demon, though. the only sites I pay for music on are beatport, juno, etc.

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trog
Posted 01:32pm 14/8/08
I'd just say that 320Kbit MP3's show a lack of understanding of what the consumer wants. If its for people to use on their MP3 players - it should be VBR. Converting from 320kbit MP3 to V0 VBR (the highest quality in LAME) would probably give ~ 10% file size reduction with no noticable difference in sound quality.
I think the average "consumer" isn't going to know or care about the differences. I actually know what they are and care what they are and I'm happy with 320kbit CBR because I know it's going to be really good quality.
Secondly, if they used FLAC for lossless, those 50MB WAV's that you don't like could be 15MB FLACs.
Even if they did have FLAC I don't know if I would buy it. Really it should cost approx. 3x as much for a FLAC track because the download size is 3x as much, and I wouldn't be prepared to pay for it.

I think there's certainly a market for FLAC/WAV and would definitely like to see it, but I think the pricing needs to reflect download size (a la allofmp3) and don't expect it to happen any time soon - so I'm happy that they're going with high quality MP3s for now.
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mongie
Posted 01:52pm 14/8/08
I think pricing should reflect the quality of the music.

FLAC / WAV downloads are the equivelent of buying a CD, so they should be sold for roughly the price of an album - the cost of the actual physical cd.

I'd expect to pay $1 for an MP3 and $2 for a FLAC, and that would probably be ok with me.
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jadz0r
Posted 02:15pm 14/8/08
Personally I don't think I would bother with WAV. I don't think an untrained ear would be able to tell the difference between an MP3 encoded at 320kbps (or 128kbps for that case) and a WAV file. If you want to listen to your new WAV file on your iPod (or other media player) you're going to have to convert to MP3 anyway (Unless iPod can play wav files and i'm unaware).
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reso
Posted 02:26pm 14/8/08
If you can't tell 128 from 320 your ears are probably broken. Obviously everyone is different but there is absolutely a difference between 128 and 320, and a noticeable difference in V0/1 to FLAC (whether it's a difference worth the time/file size is up to you).
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trog
Posted 02:29pm 14/8/08
This sounds like a great opportunity for a study to determine if people can tell the difference, really.
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mongie
Posted 03:09pm 14/8/08
I don't know what percentage can tell the difference, but I've never found it particularly challenging.

There is an obvious difference between 128kbit / 320kbit / FLAC for me.

I agree that a "study" would be interesting. I might try and set a little test up.
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demon
Posted 03:37pm 14/8/08
FLAC / WAV downloads are the equivelent of buying a CD, so they should be sold for roughly the price of an album - the cost of the actual physical cd.

i reckon any digital only release should be cheaper than buying a CD coz it's cheaper for distributer & the consumer doesn't get all the packing n shit. in fact ... wav should be CHEAPER than mp3s coz the distributer doesn't have to encode it... less handling! ;) i bought my last dubstep cd coz the case n artwork was cool so i grabbed it in that format even tho it was more exxy than getting the digital distrib.

if your gonna buy a track for mixing into a dj set then i reckon most people will want wavs... coz they are going to burn it to a CDR to play on cd-djs & so don't want a shitty re-encode.

telling the difference between different bandwidth mp3s is more dependant on the sound system & volume you play it on than your ears i've found. on shitty mp3 players i can't tell the diff... on phat club sound systems the difference is so obvious no one would mistake it.
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natslovR
Posted 04:06pm 14/8/08
Let me be the first to say that the outcome of trog's study was obvious.
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Spook
Posted 04:37pm 14/8/08
yer, i agree natslovr

people cant tell teh difference, but clever clogs like to get around telling people they can:
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Jim
Posted 04:58pm 14/8/08
for some 'music' the quality doesn't matter so much
for good music, especially on a good system, it definitely does
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mongie
Posted 05:00pm 14/8/08
WE WILL SEE ABOUT THAT SPPOOLKKK
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taggs
Posted 05:09pm 14/8/08
128->320 is very easy to tell the difference on a decent system/headphones

320->.wav is much harder. i'm sure it's still possible depending on the circumstances (type of music, what you're listening to it on, etc) but you'd have to be a bit of a tosser to care that much about it imo.

edit: for mixing i just use 320kbps mp3s cause on smaller/lower end systems it's pretty hard to tell the difference between them and wavs. if i ever get to the stage where i'm mixing at fabric or something (LOL) then i'd bust out teh wavs. the majority of people i know using cdjs just use 320.

last edited by taggs at 17:09:30 14/Aug/08
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koopz
Posted 06:36pm 14/8/08
This sounds like a great opportunity for a study to determine if people can tell the difference, really.


how about we just wrap it up in one sentence:


If you have a decent stereo @ home/work/in the car/ then mp3s can really sound like arse at a sub 320kb bitrate.. even if they are well encoded


you could draw a similar parallel with video
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Spook
Posted 08:25pm 14/8/08
hang on a tic, so if you have a good stereo, it makes mp3s sound like ass?
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natslovR
Posted 08:38pm 14/8/08
he left off '.. if your gay'
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deadlyf
Posted 08:53pm 14/8/08
Even if they did have FLAC I don't know if I would buy it. Really it should cost approx. 3x as much for a FLAC track because the download size is 3x as much, and I wouldn't be prepared to pay for it.
Why would it be 3x as much? It's not like you have to pay the royalties 3x. I'd imagine data costs for Telstra really wouldn't have a huge impact on prices and if they ever did it would be a huge shame.
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Midda
Posted 09:03pm 14/8/08
Really it should cost approx. 3x as much for a FLAC track because the download size is 3x as much, and I wouldn't be prepared to pay for it.

I really don't think that's how it works. You're basically just paying for the license to have the song in your possession, not the data itself. Sure, they'd have a premium, but I doubt it'd be 3 times as much.
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trog
Posted 10:10pm 14/8/08
I really don't think that's how it works. You're basically just paying for the license to have the song in your possession, not the data itself. Sure, they'd have a premium, but I doubt it'd be 3 times as much.
yeh sorry, totally correct; it should be more in some sort of linear increase based on the size though
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Kaos
Posted 10:43pm 14/8/08
"shame they don't track purchases so you can re-download at any time. "

Ironic.

That's the definition of DRM.
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Kaos
Posted 11:06pm 14/8/08
Also worth mentioning that JB Hi-Fi has had an online store with DRM-free music at 320kbps for a long time.

http://www.jbhifimusic.com.au/default.aspx
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Term
Posted 06:31am 15/8/08
yeah they have, basically the jb store is just Destra music site rebadged, there are a few other ones as well, but I dont know that they are actually committed to online perchasing, its more of a white label site that costs them bugger all to put up so they do.

Re you cant redownload, that is by design, though technically there is no reason why we couldnt allow that obviously. Offering mp3's for sale isnt exactly tricky business, without all the telstra crap in it we could have built it in half the time, WMA and digital rights is far more difficult to deal with.
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Nathan
Posted 06:51pm 15/8/08
Its probably worth pointing out that MP3 encoders are not created equal, two encodes of the same file at "320kbps" are going to potentially sound different depending on what actually created the MP3

Its for this reason that if I were to buy this stuff I'd want V0, because I know exactly what encoder (LAME) was used and what settings. "320kbps" could be done by any shitty software
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