online techno distribution...discuss!

[djshiva]

since the "music is not suppposed to be free" thread has been equal parts contentious and informative, i thought it might be a good idea to let the contention stay there and make a new thread to continue the very interesting discussion about starting techno specific online digital distro.

i'll admit i don't know **** all about the programming end of things, but this idea is VERY interesting to me, and i would love to hear people's ideas (without the debates and namecalling that were going on in that thread).

there were some great ideas started there. let's continue them in a constructive way, shall we? :)

[fresh_an_funky_design]

there are absolutely loads of online mp3 shops already up there. IODA offer online dfistribution with lots of them although the IRS forms are pretty intense

[SlavikSvensk]

i think the best model would be a co-op for labels. make the music cheap enough (like itunes does) and people will pay rather than steal.

[djshiva]

i know there are many online mp3 shops. i was speaking more to the ideas that folks were throwing out in the aforementioned thread. there were some really interesting ideas thrown out.

also, label owners: have you made digital downloads available on your websites? what do you think of doing this? i have been trying to convince several friends who run labels to do this, because most of them are facing money/sales issues. experiences? technical tips? anything?

just trying to make this discussion more productive than anything else. if anyone has experiences with online mp3 shops, all info is welcome!

[dirty_bass]

Yeah the point is that there are loads of online suppliers.
Who cares.
We should have our own online supplier.
A place for techno.
Somewhere that knows and understands the music, with a portal for say party promotion, mixes, blah blah.
A one stop online shop for techno.
It could even have a link to some of the made to order CD companies so you can custom fill and order a CD or whatever.

[SlavikSvensk]

Yeah the point is that there are loads of online suppliers.
Who cares.
We should have our own online supplier.
A place for techno.
Somewhere that knows and understands the music, with a portal for say party promotion, mixes, blah blah.
A one stop online shop for techno.
It could even have a link to some of the made to order CD companies so you can custom fill and order a CD or whatever.

exactly. like i said, a co-op owned by the labels represented

[Sunil]

Yeah the point is that there are loads of online suppliers.
Who cares.
We should have our own online supplier.
A place for techno.
Somewhere that knows and understands the music, with a portal for say party promotion, mixes, blah blah.
A one stop online shop for techno.
It could even have a link to some of the made to order CD companies so you can custom fill and order a CD or whatever.

Couldn't something like this be done through the BOA site? Or as an offshoot site/shop? Obviously it'd take a bit of planning, Mark's consent, and a few people to run the show and possibly invest some dough... but it could make sense.

[dirty_bass]

Well, I think it needs to be independant of BOA really. It`s own thing, rather than tied to one particular label or person.

[tocsin]

Any place could operate in such a manner. And there are numerous places that do. The problem is, they aren't centralized. And, when it comes to shopping, that is a big inconvenience for people to jump from site to site to listen to the tracks and buy them.

The idea here would be to have something exist as nothing more than a virtual window display and checkout counter. Thus, a place like BOA could continue to exist while also taking advantage of the main portal. It also allows for some integration with people who haven't promoted a web presence and such.

But, while I'm keeping this ridiculously over-simplified right now, the idea is to have a central point that doesn't act like your typical distributor/middleman while skimming a fair amount of your profit off the top of each sale. Rather, the sale results in the money going directly to whatever entity owns the music. From a collective approach, we have all the resources to do this. In the end, our only steady costs really stand to be server space and bandwidth. We can likely find people willing to donate some of this (I'm certainly willing to). But, if a good number of the artists in the techno scene can get brought in on this and sell through the site, a significant chunk of the expenses for running the thing could likely be paid with advertisements.

There's just some hurdles we are facing in the code possibly as I have not seen anything like this (doesn't mean it doesn't exist however).
We need the interface to do the following:
a.) Have a user interface for people who have access to add data.
b.) Have a billing system that could handle multiple different credit merchant accounts, while appearing as one purchase for the consumer.
c.) Have a storage interface that allows for data to be sent from servers on which the actual interface does not reside.

Then, after that, there is the monumental task of getting artists and labels to actually agree to use the site and to promote the thing. Without some real promotion, it's pointless. However, this can be kick-started with links to the site printed on record stickers sleeves, on CDs and the booklets/inlays, on mixtapes, on MP3s one may be inclined to make available for free, and as an affiliation next to your name on a flyer when booked. If enough of us really want to see something like this, we could make it happen.

[Sunil]

Well, I think it needs to be independant of BOA really. It`s own thing, rather than tied to one particular label or person.

Ok, well it was just a thought.
Anyway, the idea is there now, and it seems straightforward enough, albeit a bit of work for whoever is interested in doing it. Whoever here is serious in this project should get together, and make it happen. There's not a lot more that can be said now.

[Komplex]

Well, I think the labels and artist that would distribute music through this portal should all chip in a percentage of running costs. That way there's no free loaders while someone is doing all the work behind the scenes...

[Martin Dust]

I've been looking a "download" code for a month or so as I'm very interested in this but it will need a monster server to be any good, in fact I reckon you need 3 servers before you even start. One for the Web services, One for the Music and a third that is a mirror of the music server, this is so it can be backed up with slowing down the services...

[dan the acid man]

and the bandwidth bill could be huge

[MARKEG]

we are working on the d/l section right now.within 2-3 months we will have an mp3 downloads section for the artists we're all talking about here. techno needs a quality control and hey, as long as we have the d/l sections like we have the forums, then i can't see this not working. the d/l's refelct the forums and we're all rockin. we'll have the known artists in the d/l's section for the various forums and then the upcomings in the production forums... i think you can all see what i'm getting at here. we all get paid, we all stay part of the community :)

if anyone relates to this and understands php, please contact me. otherwise i wiill sort this out myself. and believe me i will. we bloody need this.

[djshiva]

yeah, i think it would be great to have blackoutaudio as the "one stop shop" for techno, as it were. we already have a hoppin' community. if we can connect that with the music sales, then people can not only be "consumers" of the music, but a part of the community as well. cheers mark and everyone else here, for all you do for techno!

i *heart* blackout audio!

(please excuse the random cheeriness from me today)

[holotropik]

Sounds perfectly bonza to me!!

[tocsin]

we are working on the d/l section right now.within 2-3 months we will have an mp3 downloads section for the artists we're all talking about here. techno needs a quality control and hey, as long as we have the d/l sections like we have the forums, then i can't see this not working. the d/l's refelct the forums and we're all rockin. we'll have the known artists in the d/l's section for the various forums and then the upcomings in the production forums... i think you can all see what i'm getting at here. we all get paid, we all stay part of the community :)

if anyone relates to this and understands php, please contact me. otherwise i wiill sort this out myself. and believe me i will. we bloody need this.

It could be bigger and more convenient than that though, Mark. Ideally, while you have your own corner of thet here, with your own artists, there could be a central server that taps into your site, along with many others, all while making it appear integrated in the process. From a digital standpoint, this is very doable. The only place where it would get tricky would be with hard tangible mediums (vinyl for example) that are owned by different entities due to individual shipping costs. Still trying to wrap my head on how to get that one to work, aside from having some designated drop points where labels could send records in advance related to the frontend. But, that incurs an additional cost and bookkeeping efforts and starts to resemble the traditional distributor.

As for a PHP script you're looking for to work this, take a peak around over at "hotscripts.com" as there are a number that already exist which work well for storefront purposes.

[Martin Dust]

we are working on the d/l section right now.within 2-3 months we will have an mp3 downloads section for the artists we're all talking about here. techno needs a quality control and hey, as long as we have the d/l sections like we have the forums, then i can't see this not working. the d/l's refelct the forums and we're all rockin. we'll have the known artists in the d/l's section for the various forums and then the upcomings in the production forums... i think you can all see what i'm getting at here. we all get paid, we all stay part of the community :)

if anyone relates to this and understands php, please contact me. otherwise i wiill sort this out myself. and believe me i will. we bloody need this.

You need to do a spread sheet first tho Mark, lets look at the costs:

MP3 = 99p

The Bank will probably charge 35p if you are using a merchant account. The transaction company will charge you a % plus monthly charge, lets say 20p per transaction - so that's 55p + bandwidth/Server and there's still BOA and The Artist to pay, so that leaves 44p for everything else. This kind of thing only works on a large scale or with full EPs/Albums.

Another thing is copyright and reporting, over 12% of releases on iTunes are contested for example - legal nigthmare and when you add all the other rights to this...well....

Don't want to piss on your fire but you'll need to have this covered, hit me on msn if you wanna chat about it...

[djshiva]

martin: got any links about the iTunes copyright issues? i ahd not heard about that, but would be interested in reading up on it.

[holotropik]

I just found an interesting book that discusses these issues.

"The future of music" by David Kusek & Gerd Leonard (through berklee press in the US).

I have just started reading it and it incredibly revealing. It refers to some biggies in the industry and what they forsee is the future. Worth a read.

A web link: http://www.futureofmusicbook.com

[Martin Dust]

martin: got any links about the iTunes copyright issues? i ahd not heard about that, but would be interested in reading up on it.

I don't have any links, it just what I've been told by serveral people who do lots of content for them. It's hardly surprising tho, it's pretty high profile and record companies do search for there old stuff on it a lot, plus most contracts before 86 never mentioned "any format" or "future formats" - so it means they don't have the rights. It can get very messy and I doubt Apple would publish any figures...

[The Divide]

Hey I could probably find some stuff regarding this. did some research on digital distribution late last year and we found info like this, I had a login for mintel, if i can find it will pass it into this forum (**** it haha)

http://www.mintel.com/

It wasnt just itunes running into problems, other services such as HMV digital, were been target by labels claiming they weren’t getting their fair share of the deal and it was raising questions about how they were going to receive the money. I cant remember it all off the top of my head tho

Theres lots of info on this site tho, I would have a look myself but im really busy at the mo…

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/index_html

[holotropik]

If I may bring up an example of how this may work...

Consider how Porn-sites work. They have a title page showing all sorts of samples of what is to be expected once inside the site proper.
How do you get inside? Well you first have to subscribe. Some offer a time based access while others offer pay-per-view.

Just one example of how to navigate the online advantage. Remember, its all about process not product and the ony way to take advantage of all this change is to adapt or die :)

[Komplex]

ur such a porn freak mate ;)


love the idea. I think ur on the money....

replace the individual porno sites with label pages or online shops and replace something like www.worldsex.com or equivalent with techno portals... like www.worldtechno.com :)

but would it work the same way? there is a much smaller demand for techno compared to porn...

[Komplex]

shit, I didn't realise there actually was a site www.worldtechno.com, was just an example of what to call it.

[tocsin]

Processing fees are a non-issue. With paypal, it's $.33 USD per transaction. If that makes selling an mp3 at 1 dollar a loss, set a minimum purchase. The thing that would be cool about a front end owuld be that this option could be left up to the individual owners/sellers of the music and not the site itself.

[Analog.1]

MP3s are a 'unsavoury product'. Selling music in a compressed form is 'unsavoury'. If you buy a track in MP3 format online you are paying for 80% of the track, the other 20% has been wiped out in the compression process. If your going to sell music online it must be the track, the whole track and nothing but the uncompressed original track just as it is when you buy music on Vinyl / CD.

Artists could possibly set up their own personal website and sell their music online, they could sell their tracks in uncompressed .wav / .aiff formats. These will take longer to download than a MP3 but broad band speeds are getting pretty fast these days.. something inside your head will be saying 'wow, im getting the real thing i dont mind paying for this''.

[TechMouse]

they could sell their tracks in uncompressed .wav / .aiff formats.
I'd go for FLAC for preferance.

Or even OGG if you need to save on bandwidth.

[TechMouse]

As I said in the other thread, I'm quite happy to put a few hours here and there into something like this.

[tocsin]

Cool, Techmouse. :) I'm down as well. However, I am currently in the middle of a move. So, I can't put full attention into this until April 1st.

Analog.1, if you'd like to take the acid test, I'd be more than happy to encode a track at 320kbit VBR and add some garbage data at the end to make the exact same file size as a WAV file holding the same tune. You'd just have to promise not to cheat and only use your ears to detect a difference. :) In fact, that challenge is on the table for anyone who cares to take it.

[Analog.1]

Analog.1, if you'd like to take the acid test, I'd be more than happy to encode a track at 320kbit VBR and add some garbage data at the end to make the exact same file size as a WAV file holding the same tune. You'd just have to promise not to cheat and only use your ears to detect a difference. :) In fact, that challenge is on the table for anyone who cares to take it.

Can a MP3 sound as 100% as good as the uncompressed original when played on the highest quality audiophile sound system? I have my doubts.. If your going to sell music, sell the music in its original form, not in some tacky MP3 ipod format... (IMO)

[Jay Pace]

MP3 can sound as good as WAV: http://www.blackoutaudio.co.uk/portal/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=43485

MP3 is just a convienience thing while bandwidth and storage get up to speed.
MP3s were necessary when people had 56k modems and 4gig hard drives.

Domestic 8 meg pipes and 20 gig mobile phones make the need for MP3 obselete.

But in the interim - they're quick to download, easy to store and sound to 99% of people as good as the original.

[TechMouse]

mp3 is perfectly fine - anyone who says they can tell the difference between 320kbps mp3 and WAV is a liar. FACT.

But, as I say, Ogg is even better, and FLAC is totally lossless anyway.

[Analog.1]

if FLAC is TOTALLY lossless, meaning the FLAC file is IDENTICAL to the original then maybe, this is the way forward for distributing music online.

[Analog.1]

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

[tocsin]

Take the acid test, Analog.1. Here is a track I wrote. I've spawned 4 copies of it so you won't have the luck of a 50/50 guess. Just give 'em a listen and see if you can tell me which ones are wavs and which ones are mp3. Don't cheat! ;)

http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song1.wav
http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song2.wav
http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song3.wav
http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song4.wav

[TechMouse]

Take the acid test, Analog.1. Here is a track I wrote. I've spawned 4 copies of it so you won't have the luck of a 50/50 guess. Just give 'em a listen and see if you can tell me which ones are wavs and which ones are mp3. Don't cheat! ;)

http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song1.wav
http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song2.wav
http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song3.wav
http://acidgrave.gabber.org/test/song4.wav

This'll be interesting!

[tocsin]

Just so people know the specs, here's how I did it. I took the original wav file of the song I composed and encoded it with the LAME codec at 320kbit VBR 44.khz highest quality. I then opened that mp3 in Soundforge and saved it as a WAV. Thus, that particular WAV sounds only as good as the MP3 from wihch it was saved. For some reason, the MP3 file, when saved as a WAV, was slightly larger. I mention that part only as a means to possibly gauge if someone has "cheated." ;) Though, in the end, if anyone manages to determine the identity of every file correctly (MP3 or WAV), I'll take their word for it.

[Analog.1]

They all sound the same to me but its hard to judge with distorted gabber as most of the harmonics have been crushed anyway.
Even if i wasnt to tell the difference with a top quality high definition recording, the fact is some of the information is missing from the audio when its a MP3 and i personally think this makes the product unsavoury. I say if your going to sell audio it must be in its original uncompressed form just like it is on Vinyl + CD. (IMO)

[tocsin]

If you can't hear the difference, that's all that matters. If you want, I'll be more than happy to post 4 examples of just a string sound with the same encoding.

[Analog.1]

Would what you trust playing on a 10,000 K sound system, a MP3 or uncompressed audio?

[Jay Pace]

I play mp3s on 10k+ soundsystem regularly
At 320k you can't tell the difference. Especially on a loud PA. Maybe if you did a million AB tests on the most expensive monitors in the world, but not on a big PA.

Even at lower bitrates an mp3 still has more audio information than vinyl.

[tocsin]

Analog.1, yes. I'm in the same boat as Jay here. I have played MP3s on 10k rigs of multiple different bitrates. The standard one in most of the MP3s I played at the time I was actually doing this was probably 192kbit CBR which is far inferior to a 320kbit max quality VBR encode. Yet, it sounded absolutely fine on the rig. Nobody would know it was an MP3 unless I were to tell them.

[Jay Pace]

And to really be pedantic....

CD is limited to 16bit 44100, and vinyl is massively restrictive in terms of what you can do.
You always "lose" some sound quality. But it doesn't really matter, because the losses are insignificant.

[1992]

Online techno distribution... Suuuuuucks!

Its all about being able to buy techno on Juno. I love juno, their customer service frikken rocks! I've never had such great customer service from a record store EVER! Back when I used to shop at Concept, if a record was warped .... your screwed.... But with juno, if its warped they will send you a brand new one free of charge!

[Analog.1]

People who download MP3s from unknown sources are risking poor sound quality due to the way the MP3 might of been created.
If MP3s are for sale surely they must be encoded in the best way possible, ie 320kbit with lame encoder (how can you trust everyone to do that?)
No way can you sell a track as a 128kbit MP3, ive heard of people already doing this...
In my world people would sell their music online compressed as lossless FLAC files, once you have downloaded / paid for the music it would be then your choice to burn a CD or create a MP3 or whatever...

[tocsin]

The nice thing about FLAC and OGG is that they are open source. LAME is quasi-legal in that you can grab the source, but not binaries. I forget the reasoning. So, regardless, you could sell in both FLAC or MP3. The thing is, a lot of digital playback technology does not support FLAC and a consumer might want something ready to play on their rig out of the box so to speak.

As for your comment about 128kbit being sold, it's a non-issue. The only places I've heard about doing this are piracy fronts selling their Kazaa stock. Especially for what we are discussing trying to do here, there'd be no reason not to encode in 320kbit as we'd have access to originals and the time it takes to encode either a 128 or a 320 is not distinguishable by human on most machines. In addition, various software exists for unix/linux which can pull out the information from MP3s, including the bitrate at which it is encoded. The interface could be designed to show the bitrate of any MP3 that is for sale. But, even that would be overkill. Nobody has any significant reason to sell 128kbit MP3s if they are the original author/owner since, in the end, a 320kbit VBR version is only about twice as large in file size generally.

[tocsin]

Also, forgot to add, when it comes to FLAC, for archiving purposes, it takes up a lot more room than MP3.

[TechMouse]

the fact is some of the information is missing from the audio when its a MP3 and i personally think this makes the product unsavoury.
Yes, but it's bits that your brain can't percieve anyway, so you don't need them.

[detfella]

there are reports that say different and that frequencies above 20khz (or below 20hz) although not directly heard can have a pyschoacoustic effect.

[1992]

As they say on DOA.... "320kbps or STFU!" Actually, I would prefur if these websites like Juno would sell you the full quality WAV file on a CDR then as 192kbps MP3s. I think selling 192kbps MP3s is just totaly crap.

BTW: The people who say that you can't tell the difference between 128 or 192kbps in comparison to a WAV are just FULL OF CRAP!!!!! There is a dramatic difference, mostly in the high end and its the 909 OHs that stand out as suffering the most because its a sound that your used to. I've done my encoding experiments. The lowest KBPS you can use that doesn't "seem" to suffer sound quality loss is 256kbps, anything lower is uncivilized.

[holotropik]

A DJ mate of mine, who plays my stuff out in Melbourne, reckons that 256kbps MP3 are fine for most applications. He plays using Ableton, Final Scratch and CD.

[tocsin]

192 kbit is a crapshoot. For the most part, I've had no negative artifacts in it and, on the occassions when I do, it's not something someone would notice at 10,000 watts. I have no idea why someone would sell a 192kbit MP3 though.

[koma]

for home listening, 128 is erm ok, although there's a big difference from 160 and 192
but, when it comes to selling iw oudl go under 256

anyway, when you sort that out, we could discuss financing of the project,
the same way BOA could finance itself

[TechMouse]

there are reports that say different and that frequencies above 20khz (or below 20hz) although not directly heard can have a pyschoacoustic effect.
Well I guess that all depends on the clarity of your soundsystem.

Most rigs are loud and powerful, but they're hardly audiophile gear.