I completely agree.
The primary reason I haven't just ripped all my CDs to lossless hard drives and packed them into storage is the accessibility of liner notes and booklets. Especially for historical reissues, but even with recent releases.
So I certainly don't want to pay as much (or sometimes more) for a lossy compressed download without the artistic, graphical, and informative liner notes.
Unfortunately in recent cases there seems to be little choice. With the decline of CD sales some recent specialist historical reissues have, apparently, been issued in such small quantities that they quickly go out of physical print. Even used copies of releases only a few years old cost significantly more than the original release.
In theory market forces should induce reissues of releases that people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for used, right? In practice, either the labels pay no attention to aftermarket out-of-print prices (something that wouldn't surprise me at all) or they know that the demand for niche historical reissues is really so constrained that a physical re-release really wouldn't make back its cost, at least in a reasonable time frame.
"Little Walter: The Complete Chess Masters" and "Shake a Tail Feather! The Best of James & Bobby Purify" and "Allen Toussaint: The Complete Warner Recordings" are all examples I've recently run across. Yes, you can pay to download them from the standard online sources: compressed and without the liner notes, which loses a lot of the reasons to buy a high quality reissue.
(At least the cost of the Allen Toussaint download reflects the diminished nature of the product… though I strongly suspect it was something like a clerical error on the part of the staffer who released it to the download site, rather than a conscious decision on Warner's part. 25 cents/track sure doesn't allow a lot of profit for anyone, especially royalties for Mr. Toussaint.)
I would love a standard download format that included uncompressed CD (or better) audio and full, non-proprietary formatted booklets. But I'm guessing the labels think my opinion is so in the minority that it's not worth the effort of coming up with a standard for such a format. Nor a separate online distribution system to support it.
Perhaps there could be some sort of custom press-on-demand system (as somewhat exists for specialist DVDs from the Warner Archives and the like). But if a standardized system doesn't already exist for CDs, it's likely far too late for it to be implemented. And the DVD on Demand offerings normally don't come with any printed information, so no liner notes again (and the DVDonD usually cost more than the standard issues, reflecting their specialist nature and tiny market).
Arthur Gaer
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On May 10, 2013, at 2:24 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> If I could get a physical booklet with a download, I'd be perfectly happy with CD-resolution (or, preferably, better) digital files. I don't pay for lossy-compressed downloads unless there is no other way to obtain the music (and I will not do this on a regular basis if this becomes the mass medium). I'm hoping that we'll settle into a world where at least 44.1/16 includes a PDF booklet and is $10 or less per album, whereas the lossy version wouldn't include the booklet and would be $5 or less. Probably high-rez PCM or DSD would be priced akin with vinyl, $20+ per album.
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> For me, the bottom line about downloads is that I resent paying for less-than-CD resolution and I want artwork and booklet copy, I'll tolerate a PDF but I want something.
>
> -- Tom Fine
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