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So Beatport stopped labeling thier tracks? (pg. 7)
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| djnitride |
| quote: | Originally posted by Adam420
Beatport has a download manager |
Even with that its a pain in the ass to use. No track numbers and the whole Arist - Track - Whatever Remix is annoying to retag every time I buy from them. |
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| sg_57 |
| quote: | | Originally posted by Adam420 Beatport has a download manager |
I stand corrected. Not been there for a few weeks, |
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| osterzone |
Take the number of people who listen to EDM/go to shows and compare it to the number of people who actually DJ.
That's like a 300 to 1 ratio right? So now shrink that DJ group to the jocks that don't get their tracks from pools.
The miniscule group you're left with...the group with the absolute lowest profit-margin potential, is what Beatport says is their target audience. ing stupid :stongue:
This guy is also really full of himself. He keeps pointing out that he's been in the business for 15 years selling downloads. I guess he thinks that must make him an expert on this subject? Last time I checked iTunes and AmazonMP3 are selling the same tracks for cheaper prices and they're blowing the ing doors off Beatport in sales.
Lastly, mainstream or not, who on earth would buy an EMI track on Beatport for their trademark ripoff prices when you can get it elsewhere for half the cost? |
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| Bierheld |
| quote: | Originally posted by djnitride
Even with that its a pain in the ass to use. No track numbers and the whole Arist - Track - Whatever Remix is annoying to retag every time I buy from them. |
Really? How do you want them tagged then? It offers a whole range of options including track numbers (called track_ID i believe) as long as you go custom. |
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| Bierheld |
| quote: | Originally posted by osterzone
Take the number of people who listen to EDM/go to shows and compare it to the number of people who actually DJ.
That's like a 300 to 1 ratio right? So now shrink that DJ group to the jocks that don't get their tracks from pools.
The miniscule group you're left with...the group with the absolute lowest profit-margin potential, is what Beatport says is their target audience. ing stupid :stongue:
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Well I don't know about that ratio, but it's obvious DJ's are their target audience. He even explains why.
However, he says it in an awkward way which I don't really agree with.
"We are still completely for DJs" is just stroking their ego's a bit more and making normal costumers feel unwanted.
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Lastly, mainstream or not, who on earth would buy an EMI track on Beatport for their trademark ripoff prices when you can get it elsewhere for half the cost? |
Why do you care?
| quote: | Originally posted by sg_57
Worse than this $1 per song surcharge on its own, it is truly painful to hear from them that they are not willing to consider selling those wav files as FLAC, (unofficially, the claim is that DJs are too xxxxxx and yyyyyy to know how to handle that format) which besides being full-fidelity and just as easily decompressed back to wav if needed:
-1) would be roughly half the size, and therefore take half as long to download.
-2) since FLAC can hold basic meta-tags this format could provide users with the same advantages as id3 tagging, all track names, artist name, album and genre already filled out AND possibility to have embedded graphics.
So the stuff is ready-to-go, pop it into Traktor and no more work required.
Really! And if they ever went to FLAC they'd never want to rescind this $1 charge, claiming some other reason for overcharging. Like the same tagging they do for free to the MP3 files.
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The problem is, if they change it now there's going to be a whole legion of DJ people crying about it, and I guess they can't afford not to please their primary costumer base in every way.
If they offer it as an extra option, it's going to cost them even more in server space. So I can see why they're leaving it be for now.
| quote: | Originally posted by LAdazeNYnights
I'm sure this topic has been beat to death here - but is there really a noticeable difference between WAV and 320kbps?
i guess it depends on how you're listening to the music. i don't dj or produce so i don't have monitors or a bangin sound system. i do have some nice headphones tho and i don't notice a difference between the 2 on these headphones. |
I suppose it depends on whether you believe that some people have more sensitive ears then others, or that the problem lies between their ears.
I've seen a very extensive blind listening test by our consumer advice group a few years ago who employed a very wide panel of listeners, anything from casual listeners to audiophiles. Using nothing but high end sound systems. And they found that, although the result differed per genre, the highest bitrate people were able to differentiate between compressed and non compressed audio was 256kbps.
That's from a practical standpoint. I'm not quite sure about the theory behind it. I know the idea behind lossy audio compression
is to cut out frequencies that we are unable to hear anyway. And that if the bitrate is too low artefacts can appear which I'm sure we've all heard at some point in the past. However, despite the mp3 format being a few decades old the fact that none of the technically superior formats (mp3PRO, AAC, WMA, OGG vorbis (goes up to 500kbps f.i.))
ever took it's place says enough about it's quality to me. |
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| sg_57 |
| quote: | | Originally posted by Bierheld I've seen a very extensive blind listening test by our consumer advice group a few years ago who employed a very wide panel of listeners, anything from casual listeners to audiophiles. Using nothing but high end sound systems. And they found that, although the result differed per genre, the highest bitrate people were able to differentiate between compressed and non compressed audio was 256kbps. |
We've all seen Hydrogen Audio debates and tests, but none of them take place in very large rooms with giant sound systems, where all of these artifacts get magnified hundreds of times.
Coincidentally, these very large rooms are called clubs, and happen to be where a lot of people who buy on Beatport play their music. So to be valid and relevant to electronic music, shouldn't these tests be run in the environment where the events in question take place, rather than some white labcoat's listening room? (Where I do agree no one can tell the difference much past a certain rate, although I'd venture 320 kB/s but there are other variables such as the quality and type of source material)
MP3 do lack punch, transient response, clarity between instruments and other hard to define qualities but the bigger the room one plays in, the more it will be noticed.
Also a lot of music on Beatport is maximized to death, fairly close to audible distortion in many cases (Defected, you reading this?) and this makes it sound awful no matter what format it's in, or the rate it's encoded at.
But in this day and age of so many people shamelessly ripping audio from a YouTube video or whatever else, it's but a very small minority that cares about sound quality at all. |
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| Bierheld |
| quote: | Originally posted by sg_57
We've all seen Hydrogen Audio debates and tests, but none of them take place in very large rooms with giant sound systems, where all of these artifacts get magnified hundreds of times.
Coincidentally, these very large rooms are called clubs, and happen to be where a lot of people who buy on Beatport play their music. So to be valid and relevant to electronic music, shouldn't these tests be run in the environment where the events in question take place, rather than some white labcoat's listening room? (Where I do agree no one can tell the difference much past a certain rate, although I'd venture 320 kB/s but there are other variables such as the quality and type of source material)
MP3 do lack punch, transient response, clarity between instruments and other hard to define qualities but the bigger the room one plays in, the more it will be noticed.
Also a lot of music on Beatport is maximized to death, fairly close to audible distortion in many cases (Defected, you reading this?) and this makes it sound awful no matter what format it's in, or the rate it's encoded at.
But in this day and age of so many people shamelessly ripping audio from a YouTube video or whatever else, it's but a very small minority that cares about sound quality at all. |
I can't recall ever clearly hearing artifacts in any gig I've been to, and I find it hard to believe that none of those DJ's have ever used something from an MP3 source. Besides, a club is the absolute opposite of a clean lab environment with effects, EQ'ing, amplification and background noise all doing their part in ruining the sound quality, there's little point in worrying about what format is used. Since when is live music about sonic perfection anyway?
You're also being rather decadent by assuming that people who simply don't hear a difference don't care about sound quality.
The sole reason why i'm sceptical is this:
In the past when I didn't understand compression at all i used to convert low quality mp3's to flac. The filesize would increase and I was whole heartedly convinced that the converted tracks sounded loads better. When I later read that doing so actually has a negative effect on sound quality it got me thinking... |
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| sg_57 |
| quote: | | Originally posted by Bierheld Since when is live music about sonic perfection anyway? You're also being rather decadent by assuming that people who simply don't hear a difference don't care about sound quality. |
Given the opportunity, I'd encourage anyone to check out what a 250,000 Watts Clair Bros, Turbosound or EAW Pro line array touring rig can deliver in terms of clarity, coherent soundstage, predictable reverberation time and flat frequency response down to 25 Hz as well as other characteristics.
Touring for major acts like U2, Springsteen, Madonna, Prince is where most of the advances are made in this field, they have the biggest budgets and way to do things clubs can only dream about.
Obviously it all adds up, and does make a great deal of difference in any room... this very much includes quality of the source material.
All I said was that there are many hungry DJs out there who will stop at nothing to lift an exclusive promo track, even if it's from YouTube. Notoriously from Eastern European countries like Romania where a majority of everything is bootlegged. I have been on those sites before. Astounding... |
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| SYSTEM-J |
Anyone who thinks they can tell the difference between 320 MP3s and WAVs is deluding themselves. Usually when you ask these people about their listening equipment, their systems don't even go to those frequencies.
And even on the most amazing club soundsystem, your ears get tired in loud environments quite quickly so I strongly doubt you could hear it even through Fabric's system. |
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| sg_57 |
| quote: | | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J And even on the most amazing club soundsystem, your ears get tired in loud environments quite quickly so I strongly doubt you could hear it even through Fabric's system. |
You are correct, because Fabric choosed to ignore that a sound system and the room it's in are all part of the same thing.
Their untreated acoustics are so horrendous and reverberant with all the brick, concrete, metal and glass in the room that it would not make a difference. Room B is even worse, if one can conceive of this. (And big ups to Berghain, Matter and Warehouse Project for only adding to this)
This of course says how backwards clubland generally is when compared to the proper and predictable acoustics in concert halls and auditoriums, where they and the audience care a great deal about such matters.
Like you said, it's just about getting your freak on for the weekend, not art.
Not for all of us, though. Even though just a small minority, some do seem to care about this. Wish they could have made Plastic People in a slightly bigger room with high ceilings. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| Fabric is widely reputed to have the best soundsystem of any club in the world, so if you don't rate their sound quality it's safe to say no club system is good enough to hear the difference between WAV and MP3. |
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