Online Music Services - MusicWeb-International

It seems inevitable that the future of music, at least as far as obtaining it in recorded form goes, is online.

The days of the specialist shop are numbered, unfortunately. It is not just the Tower Records that have disappeared as a shopfront presence. How many of you can would report that their local CD shop is a shadow of its former self, or is no longer there? Here in Newcastle (the Australian one north of Sydney with a population of 500,000) there is no specialist classical music shop, and classical CDs barely rate a presence on the shelves of the CD retailers that do exist.

Even in Sydney, the situation is fairly grim, though there are a few specialist shops, but the new releases are ones I've seen on Musicweb a couple of months earlier, and as for getting older releases by back order ... well, don't get me started!

As a consequence, I've hardly bought a CD from an Australian shop in the last two years, and have gone down the path of ordering them from the United Kingdom - in 99% of cases, they arrive within a few weeks and about two-thirds the price that they would be in a local shop (if they were obtainable at all).

But buying CDs as a physical entity is not what this article (and its associated pages) are about. We are now in the early stages of the next step away from buying our music in a shop: where the physical entity of a disc (black or silver) is no longer part of the process. Our purchases will be in the form of data transmission through our modems (I will refer to the area as digital music, which is the industry term, even though we all know that CDs and DVDs are digital as well).

The evidence is already very clear that this is the future. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry recently released a report titled "Digital Music Report 2007" (January 2007), the relevant points for classical music devotees of which are:

It should be noted that at the same time, CD sales have continued to decrease, showing a 25% decrease in units sold between 2000 and 2005 (in the United States).

An explanation of the types of services available
Download
The majority of services offer download of the music as files which you save to your computer's hard disc. These become your property to do with as you will.

The most common format is MP3, a compressed file format for audio. There is a loss of sound quality which some people will say is unacceptable It is dependent on the amount of compression: 192 kilobytes per second is common, and it gets as low as 48 and as high as 320. I'm afraid my 40-something year-old ears have got to the point where the difference (between full CD quality and good mp3, 192 say) is not enough to worry about.

Full CD quality (lossless) is gained by the WAV format, but unless you have a very fast internet connection and a large monthly download allocation, you will find this rather burdensome (see file size comparison in Table 1 below).

There are three other less common formats: the lossless FLAC, and the compressed AAC, WMA and OGG.

FLAC manages to do both reduce the file size without information. It works in a similar way to Winzip and other such programs, and is able to achieve lossless compression of around 50%.

AAC is considered to be sonically superior to mp3 at the same compression rate, and is the format used by Apple with iTunes and the iPod.

WMA is the Microsoft entry in the field. Obviously it is supported by Windows Media Player (among many other PC media playing software), but the format is also supported by many portable devices. It too achieves a more efficient compression at the same sound quality as mp3.

OGG is something known as a container format (the precise meaning of which, I freely admit, escapes me). There is a Wikipedia page which "explains" this, and I direct the curious reader to that.

Table 1. Comparison of file sizes (in Mb) for a music track of 5'40 duration

What if I want to play my downloaded music on my CD player?
The bad news is that only WAV files can be directly burnt to audio CD format for playing on a conventional stereo unit. The good news is that files of any of the format types can be converted using freely available (and free) software (though you may find it difficult to track down an aac converter). The "lossy" formats (mp3, wma, aac) will create a lesser quality sound (though unless the compression is very substantial eg 48 kbps, it is not too intrusive; while FLAC files will generate sound of identical quality to the original CD.

A downside of some download sites
With some download services (eg emusic), you are limited to a certain number of downloads per month, the number not surprisingly depending on how much you are paying. Unfortunately, this system is not designed to suit the classical listener. Why not? One download is one CD track, regardless of duration.

This is fine for pop/rock where most tracks are of a similar length, but is rather a problem for something like the Goldberg Variations, where your entire month's downloads (and more) would be used up by the 32 tracks. Mind you, if your taste runs to Mahler, then you could get the 20+ minute first movement of Symphony 3 as one track download! This is clearly an issue for classical subscribers.

Streaming
In this instance, the bytes of musical information being transferred through your modem are being immediately translated into sound. Once you press the stop button or the music finishes, it is gone: it is not stored permanently on your computer. It is, therefore, the 21st century equivalent of the distinction between listening to a recording on your player versus listening to it on the radio.

You will need specific software (generally free) to play the music, since the form in which it is being sent down the connection will have been determined by the webcaster. Normally, the webcast page will specify which software you require, and if you don't have it, will provide a link to a site from where you can install it.

Fortunately most people will already have the three most common programs that webcasters use: Window Media Player (if you have Windows you have WMP whether you want it or not), Real Player or Quick Time.

To allow this to happen without interruptions requires a relatively fast, but more importantly reliably consistent, broadband connection. If not, you will face regular breaks in the sound (and a message in the software along the lines of "Buffering ....". The buffer is a "bucket of data" which the software that generates the music on your computer uses. If it is emptying the bucket faster than it is being filled from the internet connection, then you will get the annoying break.

Webcast
Technologically, this is just streaming, but the distinction being made here is that the content is live radio or a concert, rather than a recording of your choice, hence the name: the web equivalent of a radio broadcast.

Other terms
DRM - Digital Rights Management; a copy protection system devised by the big labels to safeguard against piracy. Needless to say it didn't work for very long. In most cases, there is no DRM (or any other form of protection) on downloaded files purchased from the commercial sites. Fairplay is Apple's proprietary protection code, there are others.