8 ms·

Many times, buying the CD and ripping it to FLAC* is the only way to legally acquire* music for use with your computer. * It must be lossless and high quality.

by dusted 5y ago

Many times, buying the CD and ripping it to FLAC* is the only way to legally acquire* music for use with your computer. * It must be lossless and high quality. * It must work offline.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
FYI not this format shifting was legal in the UK but was made illegal again (a few years back), seemingly at the request of media companies. Programmes like iTunes appear to be unlawful as they enable and encourage this infringement. UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose. This is true of copyright law everywhere.
oofabz 5y ago
That used to be true, but these days there are many sites selling legal FLAC downloads, like HDtracks, Qobuz, Bandcamp, and Bleep.
- bigiain 5y ago
  While that's true, those don't come close too having the range of music I'd like to own.
  - spacexsucks 5y ago
    With streaming, you own nothing
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      Chances are he isn't streaming it either if he can't find legal downloads.
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  Only having experience with HDtracks, they don't really have much. Sure they have the most popular stuff for the most part but I often find that albums are missing for an artist or entire artists are missing. Not sure if it is a geographic restriction or if its like that everywhere.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    > Sure they have the most popular stuff That sounds like you need to try bandcamp, because they are missing the most popular stuff ;)
    - Cockbrand 5y ago
      Bandcamp really is a treasure trove for finding releases of established and new independent artists. It seems that their business model is quite fair towards artists as well. It also seems that their acquisition by Epic games hasn't negatively affected them so far. [Edit]: And they offer all downloads I've encountered so far in several lossy and lossless formats, including FLAC and WAV
      - Semaphor 5y ago
        Pretty much every metal band I discover, nowadays, is on bandcamp. I’m at 75 albums* and growing :) I really hope Epic won’t ruin it. *: Mostly albums, some few are EPs or single tracks
      - slothtrop 5y ago
        The acquisition is still quite fresh. I'm not looking forward to the policy changes once they do roll out.
CrlNvl 5y ago
Qobuz allows you to download High Fidelity music without any DRM
- omnicognate 5y ago
  Yeah, there are lots of places selling DRM free, lossless music. However, between the lot of them they fall far short of comprehensive coverage and I frequently have to buy and rip CDs to get the music I want.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    And occasionally you run into weird issues like where all online offerings are missing the pre-gap material from the CD, i.e. the bits between the tracks that are shown with a negative timestamp and which are only played when you play the disc straight through without hopping between different tracks. Plus liner notes are often omitted online, and occasionally that, too, is a little bit of a shame, even if the main thing is of course the music itself.
chrisseaton 5y ago
Apple Music and iTunes are lossless, high quality (often higher than a CD as they have multi-channel masters) and work offline, for example.
- z3c0 5y ago
  Do you retain ownership of the files upon cancelling your membership? If not, I wouldn't consider that "acquiring" so much as "borrowing".
  - zekica 5y ago
    You do. They have some kind of a watermark or metadata specific to your copy but don't have DRM.
    - ubercow13 5y ago
      Only for iTunes ones, not Apple Music.
    - z3c0 5y ago
      Nice! It's about time. Too bad they spent almost two decades doing the opposite, or I'd still have my account.
      - pwdisswordfish0 5y ago
        iTunes music has been DRM free since 2009 (with some exceptions, probably).
        z3c0 5y ago
        Was that retroactively applied? Because my music from pre-2009 remained DRM'd, but maybe I just needed to re-download them. On top of that, it was all AAC, and I regularly had to convert the files to be usable anywhere but Apple's products. It became such a chore, that I gave up on the Apple music ecosystem entirely, and I don't really have any regrets about it.
charcircuit 5y ago
Making a COPY from the CD to your computer is not legal us unless you have a license that allows you to do so.
- brazzy 5y ago
  That depends very much on where you live. It is legal in Canada and most of Europe.
- rob74 5y ago
  IANAL, but ripping a CD that you own and then using that digital music yourself is legal - providing the songs to someone else (who hasn't paid for the album) isn't.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > IANAL, but ripping a CD that you own and then using that digital music yourself is legal - providing the songs to someone else (who hasn't paid for the album) isn't. I am also not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that providing files you ripped to someone else ISN'T legal, even if they"ve paid for the album: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.com,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.....
    - needle0 5y ago
      Of relevance: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
      - webmaven 5y ago
        Oh my. Fruit of the Poisoned Tree gone amok. Thanks for sharing that.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    It depends. If the CD has DRM, bypassing that DRM for a personal copy is a crime. If there's no DRM, I believe creating a personal copy is acceptable.
danjc 5y ago
Came here to make this observation. Is this what the ethical DJ would do? Adjacent question: what’s the legally correct way to license music for public use (e.g. DJ set)
- Sebb767 5y ago
  You'd probably buy the music as a download file from an official store (like Beatport). In fact, a lot of good electronic stuff on there never saw a physical release, so ripping CDs is not even an option. Licensing probably depends on your country. In Germany, you need to register with GEMA and pay a fee depending on the size of your audience.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    >Licensing probably depends on your country. Yep. In the US, it’s the venue that is responsible for the license. Technically, even playing a radio station in a public space requires that license, which is why most stores that have background music pay for Muzak or some similar service which bundles all the licensing costs along with the music stream itself. The license covers not just pre-recorded music but live music. I remember reading an account of a cover band which switched to playing originals because their venue didn’t have the licensing for them to play covers.
andjd 5y ago
Have you done a blind test comparing a 256 or 320 kbps AAC file to a FLAC one? At that bitrate, the AAC file is lossy in the sense that you can't recreate a bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original, but most humans shouldn't hear any difference. A decent proxy to know that this is true is that at those bitrates, a FLAC file is often smaller than the AAC one. Yes, this makes you wonder why you'd want to use an lossy format instead of the lossless one if you have the choice ... but the point is that you'll probably have just as good an experience with a high-bitrate lossy-encoded file.
- dmonitor 5y ago
  That's also dependent on your headphones. I might have shitty earbuds today, but in the future when I might have 3D "puts the sound directly into your brain" phones, I might tell the difference
  - masklinn 5y ago
    > That's also dependent on your headphones. It's not.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  The advantage of storing in FLAC though is that if you do want to encode to a more lossy format later you are not going to make the file worse than if you were to originally go from say .wav to mp3. Or if you wanted to manipulate the file later for use in a movie or something. Given that tons of players do FLAC these days and storage is relatively cheap I don't really see any advantage to using AAC.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    > storage is relatively cheap Server storage is relatively cheap, mobile storage is a different kettle of fish, and even with a lot of storage, if you have a large music collection it's much easier to blow way past with FLAC as it's at least an order of magnitude larger than even high-quality lossy tracks. I can't put my entire collection on my phone even after having converted it to a lossy format, putting the lossless masters is plain not an option. And since conversion is easy to do, and to automate, really the only reason to put lossless tracks on a device other than the storage server where they live is sheer laziness.

by dusted 5y ago

Many times, buying the CD and ripping it to FLAC* is the only way to legally acquire* music for use with your computer. * It must be lossless and high quality. * It must work offline.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

FYI not this format shifting was legal in the UK but was made illegal again (a few years back), seemingly at the request of media companies. Programmes like iTunes appear to be unlawful as they enable and encourage this infringement. UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose. This is true of copyright law everywhere.

oofabz 5y ago

That used to be true, but these days there are many sites selling legal FLAC downloads, like HDtracks, Qobuz, Bandcamp, and Bleep.

bigiain 5y ago
While that's true, those don't come close too having the range of music I'd like to own.
- spacexsucks 5y ago
  With streaming, you own nothing
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    Chances are he isn't streaming it either if he can't find legal downloads.
_Algernon_ 5y ago
Only having experience with HDtracks, they don't really have much. Sure they have the most popular stuff for the most part but I often find that albums are missing for an artist or entire artists are missing. Not sure if it is a geographic restriction or if its like that everywhere.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  > Sure they have the most popular stuff That sounds like you need to try bandcamp, because they are missing the most popular stuff ;)
  - Cockbrand 5y ago
    Bandcamp really is a treasure trove for finding releases of established and new independent artists. It seems that their business model is quite fair towards artists as well. It also seems that their acquisition by Epic games hasn't negatively affected them so far. [Edit]: And they offer all downloads I've encountered so far in several lossy and lossless formats, including FLAC and WAV
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      Pretty much every metal band I discover, nowadays, is on bandcamp. I’m at 75 albums* and growing :) I really hope Epic won’t ruin it. *: Mostly albums, some few are EPs or single tracks
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      The acquisition is still quite fresh. I'm not looking forward to the policy changes once they do roll out.

CrlNvl 5y ago

Qobuz allows you to download High Fidelity music without any DRM

omnicognate 5y ago
Yeah, there are lots of places selling DRM free, lossless music. However, between the lot of them they fall far short of comprehensive coverage and I frequently have to buy and rip CDs to get the music I want.
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  And occasionally you run into weird issues like where all online offerings are missing the pre-gap material from the CD, i.e. the bits between the tracks that are shown with a negative timestamp and which are only played when you play the disc straight through without hopping between different tracks. Plus liner notes are often omitted online, and occasionally that, too, is a little bit of a shame, even if the main thing is of course the music itself.

chrisseaton 5y ago

Apple Music and iTunes are lossless, high quality (often higher than a CD as they have multi-channel masters) and work offline, for example.

z3c0 5y ago
Do you retain ownership of the files upon cancelling your membership? If not, I wouldn't consider that "acquiring" so much as "borrowing".
- zekica 5y ago
  You do. They have some kind of a watermark or metadata specific to your copy but don't have DRM.
  - ubercow13 5y ago
    Only for iTunes ones, not Apple Music.
  - z3c0 5y ago
    Nice! It's about time. Too bad they spent almost two decades doing the opposite, or I'd still have my account.
    - pwdisswordfish0 5y ago
      iTunes music has been DRM free since 2009 (with some exceptions, probably).
      - z3c0 5y ago
        Was that retroactively applied? Because my music from pre-2009 remained DRM'd, but maybe I just needed to re-download them. On top of that, it was all AAC, and I regularly had to convert the files to be usable anywhere but Apple's products. It became such a chore, that I gave up on the Apple music ecosystem entirely, and I don't really have any regrets about it.

charcircuit 5y ago

Making a COPY from the CD to your computer is not legal us unless you have a license that allows you to do so.

brazzy 5y ago
That depends very much on where you live. It is legal in Canada and most of Europe.
rob74 5y ago
IANAL, but ripping a CD that you own and then using that digital music yourself is legal - providing the songs to someone else (who hasn't paid for the album) isn't.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > IANAL, but ripping a CD that you own and then using that digital music yourself is legal - providing the songs to someone else (who hasn't paid for the album) isn't. I am also not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that providing files you ripped to someone else ISN'T legal, even if they"ve paid for the album: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.com,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.....
  - needle0 5y ago
    Of relevance: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
    - webmaven 5y ago
      Oh my. Fruit of the Poisoned Tree gone amok. Thanks for sharing that.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  It depends. If the CD has DRM, bypassing that DRM for a personal copy is a crime. If there's no DRM, I believe creating a personal copy is acceptable.

danjc 5y ago

Came here to make this observation. Is this what the ethical DJ would do? Adjacent question: what’s the legally correct way to license music for public use (e.g. DJ set)

Sebb767 5y ago
You'd probably buy the music as a download file from an official store (like Beatport). In fact, a lot of good electronic stuff on there never saw a physical release, so ripping CDs is not even an option. Licensing probably depends on your country. In Germany, you need to register with GEMA and pay a fee depending on the size of your audience.
- dhosek 5y ago
  >Licensing probably depends on your country. Yep. In the US, it’s the venue that is responsible for the license. Technically, even playing a radio station in a public space requires that license, which is why most stores that have background music pay for Muzak or some similar service which bundles all the licensing costs along with the music stream itself. The license covers not just pre-recorded music but live music. I remember reading an account of a cover band which switched to playing originals because their venue didn’t have the licensing for them to play covers.

andjd 5y ago

Have you done a blind test comparing a 256 or 320 kbps AAC file to a FLAC one? At that bitrate, the AAC file is lossy in the sense that you can't recreate a bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original, but most humans shouldn't hear any difference. A decent proxy to know that this is true is that at those bitrates, a FLAC file is often smaller than the AAC one. Yes, this makes you wonder why you'd want to use an lossy format instead of the lossless one if you have the choice ... but the point is that you'll probably have just as good an experience with a high-bitrate lossy-encoded file.

dmonitor 5y ago
That's also dependent on your headphones. I might have shitty earbuds today, but in the future when I might have 3D "puts the sound directly into your brain" phones, I might tell the difference
- masklinn 5y ago
  > That's also dependent on your headphones. It's not.
Melatonic 5y ago
The advantage of storing in FLAC though is that if you do want to encode to a more lossy format later you are not going to make the file worse than if you were to originally go from say .wav to mp3. Or if you wanted to manipulate the file later for use in a movie or something. Given that tons of players do FLAC these days and storage is relatively cheap I don't really see any advantage to using AAC.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > storage is relatively cheap Server storage is relatively cheap, mobile storage is a different kettle of fish, and even with a lot of storage, if you have a large music collection it's much easier to blow way past with FLAC as it's at least an order of magnitude larger than even high-quality lossy tracks. I can't put my entire collection on my phone even after having converted it to a lossy format, putting the lossless masters is plain not an option. And since conversion is easy to do, and to automate, really the only reason to put lossless tracks on a device other than the storage server where they live is sheer laziness.