Tag Archives: music

High resolution downloads from Kate Bush

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The official Kate Bush website is selling high-resolution 24-bit downloads of her new album 50 Words For Snow. There is even a detailed explanation of why the downloads are on offer and how they are created, credited to Bush’s organisation “The Fish People.”

The Fish People state that CD technology is old (true) and inadequate (controversial):

…despite the huge improvements the CD brought with it, the state of technology at the time introduced some limitations in the quality of audio that could be recorded and stored on the CD. The many advantages of the CD mean that it has continued to be the default consumer format for many years. However digital studio technology has moved on immensely.

According to this account, Kate Bush mixes her recordings to an analogue 1/2 inch 30ips tape. Then she masters this to 24/96 digital, which as she states:

increases the dynamic range and frequency response of the digital process well beyond the levels perceivable by the human ear.

The master is normalised for CD’s 16/44 format, which means the volume is adjusted to use all the available headroom. However for the downloads there is no normalisation, and if the description is to be believed, the files are the same as those used for the studio mastering.

Curiously the files are offered in uncompressed .wav, which makes for a bulky download:

With these files we also wanted you to be able to hear the recordings as close as possible to the way it sounded on the analogue master. For this reason we have chosen only to make available 24/96 .wav files in an uncompressed format. By not using compression we avoid any further possibility of introducing errors or noise into the files. The downside of using uncompressed files is that the files are large and will take a long time to download.

This is unnecessary since formats like FLAC and ALAC compress the size of the files but do not lose any musical information; you can expand them back into WAV without any loss.

The files sound excellent as you would expect. It is worth noting though that efforts to identify audible difference between 16/44 and 24/96 in blind listening tests have been mostly unsuccessful, suggesting that they sound either the same or very very close to the human ear, when careful level-matched comparisons of the same master are made. If the high-res files sound different from the CD, it is more likely because of other factors, such as additional audio compression (as opposed to lossless file compression) which does change the sound, or additional equalisation applied when mastering the CD.

Another quibble I have with this offer is that it gives the keen purchaser a difficult choice. Do you want the CD with its attractive hardbound mini-book and artwork, or download which costs more and comes with no artwork but may sound better? The keen fan has to buy both. By contrast, recent Peter Gabriel CDs have a code that lets you download the high-res files as well for no additional cost.

That said, kudos to Kate Bush for making available such high-quality downloads.

Amazon.com offers U2 band members for sale

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The last throes of physical media for music has spawned the appearance of fabulously expensive box sets which include a little bit of what fans want – like rare concerts, outtakes or new surround mixes – and a lot of what they probably will look at once and put away for ever, like paper memorabilia, badges and trinkets. In many cases vinyl records are included. It is all in the box, so if you want that little something, you have to get the lot, even if you do not have a turntable.

An example is David Bowie’s Station to Station box set, currently £96.92 at Amazon’s UK site, which has badges, vinyl, cards and a fan club certificate, and is also the only official source for a 5.1 mix of Bowie’s classic album on DVD.

Another is the Who’s Live at Leeds 40th Anniversary Special Edition, which includes vinyl album and single, poster and book, along with the only release on CD of the Who’s 1970 performance at Hull. Originally released at around £80, it sold out and now commands high prices on the collector’s market.

Now it is U2’s turn, and the band or its label seem determined to out-do the others in both unnecessary packaging and extravagant price. The Achtung Baby 20th Anniversary Über Deluxe Box Set, due in October, is £329.99 in the UK or $588.57 on Amazon’s US site. You get a magnetic puzzle box, 6 CDs, four DVDs, 5 vinyl singles, 16 prints, a book, a magazine, badges, a sticker sheet, and a pair of sunglasses.

However, it seems someone at Amazon has a sense of humour. Check the last words of the editorial description:

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Curiously those words do not appear in the UK description.

Warring models of music distribution

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How should we pay for the music we listen to? In the digital, internet era, it seems to me that there are three business models.

In the first model, you pay for a lifetime right to each album or track you want to add to your collection. This is the most similar to what we are used to from purchasing physical media like records or CDs. You do not own the music of course; all you have ever purchased is a licence to listen to it.

Until now the digital equivalent has been downloads as offered by Apple iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 store. However, Apple has now announced iCloud, which extends this model to de-emphasise the actual download. You download a track to play it on your device, but there is no problem if you have more licenced tracks than you have space for; you can just download the ones you want to play. You can also “upload”, but when you do this, you do not really upload the tracks, but rather just inform iCloud’s database that you are licenced for them.

The second model is where you subscribe, giving you the right to play anything that your music provider has to offer. The most successful example is Spotify, which has a superb client for Mac and PC that offers near-instant playback of any of 13 million tracks.

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An advantage of this approach is that it is naturally social. Since everyone has access to the same library, you can share playlists easily.

The third model is where you do not pay at all. In pre-digital days, you could listen to the radio or swap tapes with friends. Now almost anything is available, legally through Spotify (though now restricted to 2.5 hours per week and 5 times per track), or illegally through countless sites easily found through Google, or through copying your friend’s hard drive stuffed with music.

Personally I am a fan of the second model. I think musicians should be rewarded for their work, and that all-you-can-eat licencing is the best and fairest approach, taking advantage of what technology enables. Buying a lossy-compressed download with a restrictive licence is also poor value compared to buying a record or CD.

I get the impression though that the music industry is set against the subscription approach. Apple seems reluctant to embrace it, hence iCloud is still tied to the first model. Spotify still has it, but the company now seems to be putting increasing emphasis on downloads and locally stored music, which is strange given its original concept, as well as making its ad-supported free streaming account less attractive.

The business reasoning, I guess, is a belief that selling music piecemeal is more profitable, and exploits the collecting instinct that has served the industry so well in the past.

The risk is that the third model will sweep it aside.