Don’t ask me how but I recently came into a pair of Dr. Dre’s signature headphones, the $300+/pair “Beats By Dre” (actually made by Monster). I was skeptical at first but I have to be honest, I really love these headphones. Incredibly comfortable, excellent noise-canceling, astounding dynamic range, cool looking, excellently packaged — audiophiles, put these on your holiday list this year.
My first test run with the Beats By Dre headphones was listening to a 256kbps Led Zeppelin MP3 I’d bought from Amazon. “These things sound like shit,” I thought. But then I realized it wasn’t the headphones that sounded terrible, it was the MP3. The headphones were actually so good I was hearing the artifacts in the MP3. So I flipped over to The Fireman Apple Lossless files I had on my iPod and — um, wow — was blown away. Next I tried the FLAC files that came with David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, using Songbird (FLAC files won’t play on your iPod). This too sounded absolutely amazing. Now I’ve never been Mr. Audio Quality and nor do I think The Masses (TM) will ever prioritize fidelity over convenience, as Fredric Dannen pointed out consumers have chosen convenience over quality since the move to LP from 78. Personally I’ve been happy with MP3s since 1997. I listen to music constantly on computers, iPods, and throughout my house via Control 4. But with these headphones I was suddenly longing for CD quality audio instead of MP3.
Apparently I’m not the only one. With both The Fireman (Paul McCartney and Youth) and David Byrne and Brian Eno records, lossless files were offered at no additional charge (with David Byrne FLAC was offered, and with The Fireman you could choose either FLAC or Apple Lossless format). But due to their large file size and the fact that a lot of folks have no idea what to do with these files, you had to ask to receive them. Still, 12% of all David Byrne and Brian Eno fans took the FLAC option, and 21% of those purchasing The Fireman record direct from TheFiremanMusic.com took one of the lossless options. Those aren’t really apples-to-apples comparisons so I wouldn’t make much out of the difference between the two releases (the lossless choices were much more obvious on The Fireman record and the album was available via iTunes and elsewhere while for David Byrne and Brian Eno EverythingThatHappens.com was the sole place to purchase the album for the first 60 days), but I’m surprised and somewhat encouraged to see such a large number of consumers interested in the lossless formats.
Of course we aren’t anywhere near the first to offer FLAC files for purchase, the live show community in particular has been doing it for many years. But I haven’t seen any numbers on what percentage of consumers were interested in lossless when offered the choice, so I asked the managers of both of these artists if they minded our sharing the number (thanks to both of them for being so open to sharing). I hope you find it interesting/encouraging, too.
These quality-seekers are a small group, but a vocal group that really appreciates the love. We saw a decent influx of traffic to TheFireManMusic.com last week driven by stories like this Slashdot one about the album being available in DRM-free lossless formats. The Slashdot crowd isn’t an easy one to please, so it was heart-warming to read comments like these:
“You can purchase just the digital files, or if you purchase a physical CD or vinyl copy, you are also given access to the digital download. Not only that, but the download is available in 320-kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, or even FLAC format. If you’re interested in trying before you buy, you can listen to the entire album in a Flash player on the main page of the site. It’s so nice to see a big musician who gets it. Bravo, Sir Paul!“
“Just purchased the MP3 version. It is, as claimed, mpga 320K, DRM-free. In addition to the tracks, you get cover artwork and liner notes as jpgs.
The range of purchase options is very interesting. $8.99 for MP3 files and artwork, $12.99 for a CD, $29.99 for a direct metal mastered double vinyl record, and $79.99 for a DVD containing 24bit 96Khz tracks, and a second DVD containing multi-track session files for a selection of the album tracks.
The purchasing experience was flawless: create an account, give a credit card (with optional choice of saving the number or not; I chose not), get a zipfile of the downloads. Not a wasted keystroke or mouse click.
This really is the way I want to purchase my music. Two big thumbs up from the consumer angle. Lots of choices, low prices, immediate downloads, supports the artists.
The perfect shopping experience.“
Offering both FLAC (won’t play on the iPod) and Apple Lossless (less standard, but plays on the iPod) is interesting, too. Takers of lossless files were split 50/50 on this, half taking each. Unfortunately that means there isn’t a clear winner and we’ll probably need to keep offering a variety of files to have a complete offering.
Note our “standard” MP3 format at Topspin is 320kbps, which also sounds damn fine in these fancy headphones, better than what you get from the big digital retailers. It’s also worth noting that in many cases artists may want to charge more for the higher quality audio. White Denim did this with their (excellent) release, for example, and that’s a-ok by us.
Steve Albini, the analog-loving musician and recording engineer whose 1987 CD compilation of classic Big Black EPs was disparagingly titled The Rich Man’s 8-Track Tape, advocates going beyond CD quality 16-bit and into 24-bit audio. In fact, you can buy Shellac’s latest record as 24-bit wav files from Touch And Go’s site (and have been able to since the album’s release more than a year ago). That’s some next level shit. I’m looking forward to an artist who wants to do 24-bit FLAC or even a 5.1 mix for their fans, even though the hardware to take advantage of it is few and far between…
Oh I almost forgot, I have one suggestion to improve the Beats By Dre headphones: they should play The Chronic out of the box, without needing to be connected to anything. How much extra cost/work can it be to put The Chronic in there on a little chip? Whatever the cost, it’d be worth it.
With everybody sayin,
ian c rogers
Topspin
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