{"id":608,"date":"2008-05-03T12:11:20","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T11:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=608"},"modified":"2008-05-03T12:11:20","modified_gmt":"2008-05-03T11:11:20","slug":"at-last-legal-music-downloads-no-drm-no-lossy-compression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/608-at-last-legal-music-downloads-no-drm-no-lossy-compression.html","title":{"rendered":"At last: legal music downloads, no DRM, no lossy compression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hdtracks.com\" target=\"_blank\">HDtracks<\/a> is offering music downloads in no-compromise AIFF or FLAC formats. Currently they are CD quality; coming soon is 96\/24 FLAC which is in theory better than CD, though some argue that the benefits are inaudible. All downloads are DRM-free. If you insist, you can have MP3 instead. Prices are $1.49 per track, $11.98 per album.<\/p>\n<p>This is the kind of online music store I can enjoy. Although music files of similar quality are available from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linnrecords.com\/linn-downloads.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Linn<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dgmlive.com\/archive.htm\" target=\"_blank\">DGM<\/a> (Robert Fripp&#8217;s download store), these are individual labels, whereas HDtracks carries a number of labels &#8211; though sadly restricted to speciality rather than mainstream companies. The company was founded by David and Norman Chesky of Chesky Records, which has a good reputation for both musical and audiophile quality. You will find a few well-known names here, though they are voices from the past: Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Jerry Garcia, Roger McGuinn, Tom Paxton, Blue Oyster Cult, The Byrds, Judas Priest, The Kinks, Don Mclean, and more. There&#8217;s also a generous selection of Jazz, Chesky&#8217;s first love.<\/p>\n<p>The bad news: US only for the moment.<\/p>\n<p>What about <a href=\"http:\/\/mgn.musicgiants.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Music Giants<\/a>? These are lossless downloads too, and a wider selection, but mostly in DRM-protected WMA format. That said, DRM-free downloads are popping up there as well. Again, US only.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wlWriterSmartContent\" id=\"scid:0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:94de71f9-af05-4c80-85d9-2b5e22839ff4\" style=\"padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px\">Technorati tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/DRM\" rel=\"tag\">DRM<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/HDtracks\" rel=\"tag\">HDtracks<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/lossless\" rel=\"tag\">lossless<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/music%20downloads\" rel=\"tag\">music downloads<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HDtracks is offering music downloads in no-compromise AIFF or FLAC formats. Currently they are CD quality; coming soon is 96\/24 FLAC which is in theory better than CD, though some argue that the benefits are inaudible. All downloads are DRM-free. If you insist, you can have MP3 instead. Prices are $1.49 per track, $11.98 per &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/608-at-last-legal-music-downloads-no-drm-no-lossy-compression.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">At last: legal music downloads, no DRM, no lossy compression<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drm","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}