Buying music online: MP3 or FLAC

I use beatport and amazon all the time. Amazon's mp3 (320k) is pretty good (though they often lack album covers and such). I'd still rather have the option to buy mp3 & flac/wav though just to have a unadulterated copy since i'm paying for it. I started this about two or three years ago on a big kick to stop downloading (torrenting) music & support artists(unless it's just the hard to find stuff). No, artists don't make a lot off of sales, but it's still supporting them more than torrents do. At least their record company can say people are buying their stuff, they can have some sales statistics, etc. Plus I like amazon b/c the site is so well strutured it often leads me to other music I haven't heard of, or wish to re purchase.

If rdj released a download (through rephlex, warp, amazon whatever) of his entire discography (including pseudonym releases) in full quality i'd shell out no problem. I don't like cd's anymore (buying them), though I miss the packaging. I still burn cd's for my car, but i'm hooking up my mp3 player to the aux soon and will no longer have a need for cd's.

I think as long as prices stay around the 10 dollar mark for typical releases, and include lot's of high quality pics/artwork that can be printed out easily, or just browsed over in a pdf, things will be fine.

Edit: Meant to mention I used to use the i tunes store, but I never vibed with it very well. I don't care much for the itunes software, and their earlier on copy protection really rubbed me the wrong way.

beatport

  On 3/16/2011 at 8:51 PM, goDel said:

I'm not wasting money on some lossy product. Even if I can't hear the difference.

Yeah, I feel you on that.

I rarely buy mp3s/flacs because I love having CDs so damn much. Opening the plastic wrap, looking through the album art, etc. The same feelings most of you have on the subject.

  On 3/14/2011 at 7:57 PM, sneaksta303 said:

  On 3/14/2011 at 7:56 PM, Charles Nelson Reilly said:

i'll buy flac to store, then convert to mp3 for portable listening

me too

90% of my digital music listening is when i'm on my way to work (on my apple products ), so i chose mp3s. home listening is mostly vinyl, and when i do have to go digital at home i don't mind listening to mp3s, i personally can't tell the difference between well encoded 320kbps mp3s and lossless. flacs are annoying and unnecessary imo.

  On 3/17/2011 at 10:51 AM, verticalhold said:

  On 3/14/2011 at 7:57 PM, sneaksta303 said:

  On 3/14/2011 at 7:56 PM, Charles Nelson Reilly said:

i'll buy flac to store, then convert to mp3 for portable listening

me too

This. I actually don't listen to my flacs all that much, mostly just store them on my external hd as backup and convert to lame -V4 for my laptop and portable. I haven't actually bought all that much lossless digitally yet, probably only 3 or 4 albums, most of my collection is from my own cd rips (like a lot of you old codgers I'm still fond of physical media)

  On 3/16/2011 at 8:22 AM, azatoth said:

.wav is useless when there is FLAC, unless you have a shitty DAP that can't play FLAC. Then you fail.

I agree that FLAC/lossless is superior to wav in a few key aspects - 40-50% smaller files, tagging (wav files can't be readily tagged) - but putting them on a portable seems a bit overkill, seeing as you can fit upwards of 5x more music with mp3 without any audible difference in quality, especially as most portable listening is done in noisy environments (cars, subways, city streets, etc.). Although if you use your DAP in a relatively quiet environment, with good equipment/headphones, and can hear a difference, hats off to ya.