Chris Meller

I found Can you tell 128kbps AAC from the original? Take the test! via Digg quite fascinating today.

Since the iTunes Music Store opened, a lot of people have complained about the DRM-infested low-quality music they sold. I’ve often countered that the vast majority of users couldn’t tell one level of high-quality music from another¹.

Finally, it looks like this simple experiment has proven my point. If you look at the stats, on roughly every track about half of the people were wrong when they tried to pick the lower-quality and the original tracks apart. If you further take into account that there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll simply guess correctly every time, that means that in fact a huge majority of people don’t have a clue which track is the original - we’ll conservatively say 75% of the overall tested population.

Have you taken the Apple Challenge? Blindfold your ears and see if you can tell the difference between the encoding…

By the way, the site withstood the Digg effect by hosting their audio files on Amazon’s S3 service. Very cool!

1. I used to have a friend that ripped all his CDs at outrageous bitrates - like 400+ - and claimed he could easily tell the difference. Personally, I think it was just the drugs having rotted his brain, but whatever… ↩

While Gizmodo is advocating that we “Put Our Money Where Our Mouths Are” and boycott the RIAA in March (an idea I fully support, and which Digg users obviously love), I was shocked at the number of popular records published by RIAA members.

I knew they were powerful, but I had no idea it was this bad.

Check out the RIAA Radar’s Amazon Top Albums list. How many green “Safe” tags do you see on that page? Far too few…

I was looking at The Killers’ Sam’s Town album, and decided to see what RIAA Radar recommended as RIAA-safe alternatives to The Killers. Much to my surprise, there are a number of excellent bands available through non-RIAA labels: Gnarls Barkley, The Postal Service, Snow Patrol, Death Cab for Cutie, Barenaked Ladies, Damien Rice, Gym Class Heroes, Arctic Monkeys, Panic! At The Disco, Buckcherry, Solomon Burke, The Shins - all quite popular non-RIAA label alternatives.

With all these popular “safe” alternatives, why wouldn’t you want to boycott the RIAA for a month? It’s not like you have to do without decent music for the month… Use the month of March as not only a month to show the RIAA you’re angry at them, but also as a month to find some new non-RIAA music that’s just as good and support some of the smaller non-RIAA labels and groups while you’re at it.

Stunt RIAA sales and show labels that they don’t need to join the RIAA to make money at the same time, all while enjoying some excellent music. What’s not to love?

Need some help staying RIAA-safe in March? Check out the RIAA Radar’s bookmarklets, just to make sure you don’t stray from the path while shopping. And while you’re finding great non-RIAA music, be sure to let others know about it by blogging about your favorite artists and commenting on Digg, Gizmodo, and other stories about the boycott. While you’re at it, drop a quick comment here about an artist you’ve found that you like on a RIAA-free label - I’m always looking for more music!

Now get out there and do it!

Update: For more quality RIAA-related babble from me, check out my previous blog entry: Oh No, Could the RIAA actually be Wrong?!

Update: You can directly Digg this story here, or vote for it on Netscape here. The more people who read about this, the more I love you all…

After hearing the news via Digg today that All of MP3 will be closing sometime in the near future, I decided to stock up.

In the process of spending $20 tonight, I decided to check my history with All of MP3 to run some numbers…

Between my slow, slightly suspicious, start on March 7, 2005 and my last purchase prior to today on October 20, 2006, I spent a total of $180.93 to purchase a whopping 1,589 songs.

For those of you unable to operate a calculator, that comes out to 11.38 cents per song…

Assuming I’d have been willing to invest the same $180.93 over the past year in music purchased from the iTunes Music Store¹, that would mean I’d have netted 182 songs.

That means that, by using All of MP3.com, I was able to get 1,407 more songs for my money.

Now for the real comparison. I clicked through each pane of the painfully annoying iTunes Music Store purchase history for my account. In the same time period, I spent $1,067.59 at the iTMS on 1,078 songs².

To sum that all up:

All of MP3: 1,589 songs for $180.93
iTMS: 1,078 songs for $1,067.59

A tad different, no?

For reference, had I purchased those same 1,589 songs originally from All of MP3 at the iTunes Music Store instead, I’d have shelled out $1,573.11 for them³.

As one last note, I’d like to mention that my All of MP3 usage has not grown linearly. There has been an exponential curve to my purchasing over the past several (call it 6) months. Their introduction of the allTunes software package, combined with their ever increasing catalog and more rapid availability of new releases has greatly driven me towards them. These changes have really put it more on-par with the iTMS, in what I’d call real competition.

For a reference of the exponential growth, see this chart:

There’s a pretty obvious increase over the past 18 months…

Now, if only I had the patience to figure out some kind of predictive modeling application that would calculate how much I’d have actually spent and how many songs I’d have gotten, had I only had the iTMS as a resource… Still, even to a total laymen, I think it should be pretty obvious that, while I’m certainly willing to spend money on my music, I’m far more willing to buy much more (511 songs in this instance, and don’t forget the exponential growth curve) at a lower price.

Oh no, could the RIAA actually be wrong about how customers buy their music? Nahhh…

1. To be fair, I did purchase a number of CDs at the iTMS that weren’t yet available on All of MP3, so we’re not strictly talking apples-to-apples all around. Still, that’s $180 spent at All of MP3 that could have been spent anywhere else as well. ↩
2. Approximately. Since the purchase history doesn’t list the number of songs purchased, I assumed 99 cents each when calculating. Some rounding would also have occurred. Also note that there were 3 free songs listed on my account, which I did not take into account here. Still, the results wouldn’t have been significantly different, had we had exact figures to work with. ↩
3. Again, assuming an exact 99 cents per song. Once more, give or take a little for a full album isn’t going to make a significant impact on our figures. ↩