Why No CD-Quality Lossless Downloads?

I remember when I was in high school in the mid 90's I knew kids that ran slackware. I can't even imagine what a royal pain that offered little in return that was. Of course, it forced them to learn a skillset that has them living pretty comfortably today.

Man they were nerds though. Man.

 

Pono does....it's ironic to the hype, 95% of the store--current crushed master label CD quality FLAC files.

 

I received a weekly email from a money saving site that covers pretty much anything financial or shopping related that's offering a top deal. Today the bulletin mentioned that you can recover access to any music you've bought off Amazon through their cloud player. I downloaded Amazon music and the blurb stated CD quality playback for streaming and MP3 for the download. I do find it tricky to find the confirmation on the Amazon Player, but it is very good and pretty intuitive to use.

 

I'm actually amazed at how good the Amazon mobile music player app is. I think its much better then the iOS music app or Google Play Music's Android app, in every way that counts - user interface design, sound quality, and caching.

 

Right but looking for something that works in Linux also.

 

Thanks for the reply. I love the Amazon Player. I generally don't bring recorded music with me anymore when I travel, and just rely on the stream or a few things on the computer's internal hard drive.

 

Not just that, but with the ever building crapball of half-baked complexity, it's actually WORSE than it was 5 years ago (systemd, Unity, Pulseaudio).

The best setup I ever had was on FreeBSD 4.8. Everything worked. Bitperfect audio via OSS w/ hardware mixing, Nvidia 3d graphics, java, flash. All down hill from there.

 

Why do you need the storefront itself to work in Linux? Why not just use the web front ends all the stores have? Or are you looking for Linux compatible software to play the files?

 

Ubuntu is pretty nice, and is getting better. Not a lot of tuning required.

 

I have never gotten decent audio out of Ubuntu with pulseaudio. It doesn't like redirecting everything to the digital out. Randomly stops working, volume changes on it's on. A nightmare.

 

Really? As in Amazon Prime? I'm pretty sure they don't through that service in the US or I'd have eaten up my cell phone data plan by now. What am I missing here?

 

They can't move the CD's - that's the problem. They've got a warehouse full of CD's and fewer buyers, but there's no incentive to drop the prices on digital media. Same with ebooks - wait a few months or a year and you can get the hardcover for next to nothing, but good luck getting a price break on the ebook. And at least I can rip the CD - can't rip a book!

 

7digital in the UK are now offering 16bit FLAC in a big way as well as MP3/AAC.

 

At least in the UK 7Digital offer a fair selection of 44.1/16 downloads as well as 24 bit ones. For Classical, Presto offer loads having bought them.

 

I used some version of Linux last year. I wanted to get my feet wet. Learn it. I hadn't played with it since I was decided to major in computer science over a decade ago. I was messing around with it, and I started thinking: why am I using Linux? I have no reason to use it. It wasn't fun or interesting. All my apps run on Windows or OS-X. With Linux, you have to tweak this, hack that, and I have no beef with Microsoft or Apple, and i'm not trying to "get back at the man". Windows does everything I need it to do, and already own three versions of it that I can install at any time on any machine that I have. I only know one person who uses Linux, and I think even he abandoned it. So, what's the point? I'm a computer geek, but not that much of a geek!

 

They are here in the U.S., also. Once iTunes gets the hint and gets with the program, it's bye-bye lossy!

 

I said goodbye to lossy late last year, maybe earlier. Also, It would take me being very desparate to buy 16/44.1 files. I know iTunes, Amazon and Google are doing well enough with their music, I choose not to buy them.

 

Yeah, if you're not using Linux as a development platform or server you're really just trying too hard IMO.

 

?

 

You were talking about lossy files. The OP was asking about CD quality music files. HTH.

 

He's confused because he wasn't talking about lossy files, he was talking about 7digital, which sells lossless, and the prospects of iTunes offering lossless in the future.