Physical Music Subscription?

[Inazuma]

I used to really abuse the music clubs in the 90s. I had 2-3 subscriptions to each club (BMG, Columbia House, and CDHQ) all going at once at any given time. Each was signed up under slight variations of my name (first name, first initial & middle name, first two initials, etc.). I would get the intro package, buy the required number of albums (which was only 1 with BMG!), and then quit for a few months before rejoining. I must have picked up several hundred CDs from them when I was in high school/early in college, for an overall average of $3-4 a CD (including shipping) when all was said and done.

That reminds me of back in the day when a major gaming magazine company had free trials available for all of their magazines. I know for sure Next Generation was one of them.

Every month I would sign up for all of the magazines, multiple times and get tons of magazines for free. I would give them to my friends at school, and no one ever subscribed.

I think I finally stopped when my parents scolded me over it. -_-;

[Hobie-wan]

I used to really abuse the music clubs in the 90s.

I did too. Snapped up all of the 'alternative' stuff plus some other 80s pop they were offering for a while. Did CH and BMG when still living at home and then BMG once while off at school.

[BurningDoom]

You actually do own the music you download from Amazon. There is no DRM whatsoever. However, the quality isn't as good as buying it on CD. It's also more expensive. >_>

How is it more expensive? A single song on Amazon is 99 cents and a whole album is $7.99. Walk into Best Buy or Wal-Mart and you're paying $10-$20 for a CD, and don't even have the single song option. And I've heard no difference in the sound quality. In fact, the songs on my playlist from Amazon average about 10-13 MB a piece, while the songs that are from my CDs average about 3-6 MB a song.

[Inazuma]

You actually do own the music you download from Amazon. There is no DRM whatsoever. However, the quality isn't as good as buying it on CD. It's also more expensive. >_>

How is it more expensive? A single song on Amazon is 99 cents and a whole album is $7.99. Walk into Best Buy or Wal-Mart and you're paying $10-$20 for a CD, and don't even have the single song option. And I've heard no difference in the sound quality. In fact, the songs on my playlist from Amazon average about 10-13 MB a piece, while the songs that are from my CDs average about 3-6 MB a song.

Correct, but you are forgetting about the used market. I'm no expert but can't you buy used music CDs for dirt cheap very easily?

I know it's possible for a download song to be very good quality, but the ones that you buy from places like itunes and Amazon are very low bitrate, right?

There is no way songs on a CD are only 3-6 MB each. You must have used some heavy compression after you ripped them. I would guess that a typical music CD song is about 36 MB.

[gtmtnbiker]

I used to really abuse the music clubs in the 90s. I had 2-3 subscriptions to each club (BMG, Columbia House, and CDHQ) all going at once at any given time. Each was signed up under slight variations of my name (first name, first initial & middle name, first two initials, etc.). I would get the intro package, buy the required number of albums (which was only 1 with BMG!), and then quit for a few months before rejoining. I must have picked up several hundred CDs from them when I was in high school/early in college, for an overall average of $3-4 a CD (including shipping) when all was said and done.

I did something similar except that I used Apt numbers even though I lived in a house. The mailman didn't care and would just deliver it all to the same house. I would get creative with the names and use ones like Robert Plant, David Lee Roth, Ozzie Osbourne.

The CDs/records would be identical to what you would find in the stores but then BMG changed it and had a big white square on the back that said BMG Music Service, etc.

[BurningDoom]

You actually do own the music you download from Amazon. There is no DRM whatsoever. However, the quality isn't as good as buying it on CD. It's also more expensive. >_>

How is it more expensive? A single song on Amazon is 99 cents and a whole album is $7.99. Walk into Best Buy or Wal-Mart and you're paying $10-$20 for a CD, and don't even have the single song option. And I've heard no difference in the sound quality. In fact, the songs on my playlist from Amazon average about 10-13 MB a piece, while the songs that are from my CDs average about 3-6 MB a song.

Correct, but you are forgetting about the used market. I'm no expert but can't you buy used music CDs for dirt cheap very easily?

I know it's possible for a download song to be very good quality, but the ones that you buy from places like itunes and Amazon are very low bitrate, right?

There is no way songs on a CD are only 3-6 MB each. You must have used some heavy compression after you ripped them. I would guess that a typical music CD song is about 36 MB.

Just ripped from the CDs using Windows Media Player. Nothing else. And I'm looking right at them, 8 GB of music here and most of the CD songs are 3-6 MB. Even my songs from my Nightwish and Iced Earth albums, who's songs are typically 6 minutes or longer.

[Hobie-wan]

Just ripped from the CDs using Windows Media Player. Nothing else. And I'm looking right at them, 8 GB of music here and most of the CD songs are 3-6 MB. Even my songs from my Nightwish and Iced Earth albums, who's songs are typically 6 minutes or longer.

If you don't hear a difference with low quality rips, lucky you. 1 Meg per minute is on par with 112k MP3 rips which I can sometimes hear problems even with a quality ripping job.

[nielse16]

Just ripped from the CDs using Windows Media Player. Nothing else. And I'm looking right at them, 8 GB of music here and most of the CD songs are 3-6 MB. Even my songs from my Nightwish and Iced Earth albums, who's songs are typically 6 minutes or longer.

Maybe WMP is ripping to some format other than .wav?

A standard CD-R holds 700 mb of data or 80 minutes of audio. That means each minute of uncompressed audio (.wav) equals about 8.75 mb of data. I spot-checked a 3 hour 55 minute .wav file on my computer and was 2.31 gb, or about 9.8 mb per minute.

[AppleQueso]

You actually do own the music you download from Amazon. There is no DRM whatsoever. However, the quality isn't as good as buying it on CD. It's also more expensive. >_>

How is it more expensive? A single song on Amazon is 99 cents and a whole album is $7.99. Walk into Best Buy or Wal-Mart and you're paying $10-$20 for a CD, and don't even have the single song option. And I've heard no difference in the sound quality. In fact, the songs on my playlist from Amazon average about 10-13 MB a piece, while the songs that are from my CDs average about 3-6 MB a song.

Correct, but you are forgetting about the used market. I'm no expert but can't you buy used music CDs for dirt cheap very easily?

I know it's possible for a download song to be very good quality, but the ones that you buy from places like itunes and Amazon are very low bitrate, right?

There is no way songs on a CD are only 3-6 MB each. You must have used some heavy compression after you ripped them. I would guess that a typical music CD song is about 36 MB.

Amazon's mp3s, from the single mp3 I've ever bought off of there, are at a respectable bitrate. Some kind of VBR actually, I used to rip my own cds at a similar compression level.

But yeah, you're right, uncompressed audio is HUGE. Though you can seriously compress the shit out of it and still get identical sound for most listeners. I don't like going lower than 256k though. 320k is ideal and really should be the standard I think.

Windows Media Player has very few options when it comes to making rips and it's a kinda shitty media player anyway. Yes, it compresses the audio, a lot. And it rips everything to a proprietary format that's not supported by a lot of stuff.

Used CDs, depending on the release, can range from being absurdly dirty cheap (literal pennies) to rather pricey (for out of print stuff). Just like with everything else really.

[Inazuma]

Most of my mp3s are 320 bit rate, and they sound very good to me.