[ianmedium]

Thats not the point really. Itunes is charging the same price for an inferior product.. If we continue to dumb down everything where will we end up. Reducing the quality of music equals dumbing down. And once gone we won't get it back again! Of course the real problem is people don't actually listen to music anymore, it is part of something else that they are doing, walking, writing, working. I never see the point in using anything other than a standard player and included earphones in that case as people are not really listening!

 

[parasitius]

Quote:

Thats not the point really. Itunes is charging the same price for an inferior product.. If we continue to dumb down everything where will we end up. Reducing the quality of music equals dumbing down. And once gone we won't get it back again! Of course the real problem is people don't actually listen to music anymore, it is part of something else that they are doing, walking, writing, working. I never see the point in using anything other than a standard player and included earphones in that case as people are not really listening!

 
I have been a long hold-out with the same thoughts as you on the topic. Generally if I bought in digital form I'd be getting it from eMusic where it tended to be 1/3rd the price of a CD. The best of the best from there I would still later purchase the CD. The problem now is two fold and I fear it spells our doom:
1. More and more of the new albums of iTunes include bonus tracks that are not available on any CD edition. To me this means I not only pay $2-5 extra for the CD, I also get an incomplete album. This REALLY pains me. I can buy the 2 tracks in isolation, but it screws up my music collection because I have this nice FLAC directory and then I have 2 tracks buried in the iTunes cloud somewhere. I cannot play the FLACs in iTunes and vice versa, for listening to a coherent album.
2. More and more albums are not even being sold on CD and going direct to MP3. This has happened with 3 albums I wanted to buy my mom for Christmas this month: no CD available. Well MP3s are useless to her, she will never be that advanced, and I feel a burned CD is a lame gift... so I just had to forget the idea.

 

[Coltrane]

Out of curiosity, which albums were only lossy download? I havent heard of that yet.
 
On topic: Calling 256 kbps 1/4 of the quality of lossless is absurd. As is calling lossy 'dumbing down.' Mp3/AAC offers identical sound quality for much liss storage space (both in your computer and in your home.) Identical. In virtually all cases those who claim to notice a different are lying. In the few cases they aren't lying, the differences are so subtle that they are incredibly difficult to pick out and would only be important to people with severe OCD.
 
So yes, once again, Itunes match is great product for 'upgrading' and listening on the go.

 

[parasitius]

This is the one I wanted to gift someone but since it is not sold on CD (afaik), there was no way for me to do it:
http://www.amazon.com/Winter-Chill-Out-Tunes-Vol/dp/B006PAZ61C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357222725&sr=8-2&keywords=40+winter+chill+out+tunes
 
I guess most of the original songs (non-compilation) could be gotten on CD however. 
 
OTOH there are a lot of CDs that are sold on CD but are just way too expensive to import to America, so mp3 is the only solution unless you are rich. :/ Some Northern Kings CDs on Amazon usually ~$50 range.

 

[audioops]

So say I've got a huge library of 128kbps MP3s and my interest was in upgrading the file quality, not streaming my music... could I pay for a year's worth of iTunes Match, upgrade my files, keep them forever on my external drive then just not renew Match?

 

[L0SLobos]

  So say I've got a huge library of 128kbps MP3s and my interest was in upgrading the file quality, not streaming my music... could I pay for a year's worth of iTunes Match, upgrade my files, keep them forever on my external drive then just not renew Match?

Yes. Itunes will find your albums in the itunes store if they are tagged properly (and they can be found in the store) and upgrade them for you, though if they are DRM files you have to delete the files first. But itunes uploads the song to your icloud so if you want the songs on your computer you will have to download them from your account to your computer/iphone/ipod whatever.

 

[earthpeople]

My understanding is that you could do that, audioops. From the iTunes Match page
 

What happens if I don’t resubscribe after the first year? Will I lose any upgraded songs?
No. Any songs you’ve upgraded or downloaded again are completely safe. The only thing you lose is the central storage — iCloud will no longer stream or download matched or uploaded songs to your devices.

 
[edit: beaten to it!]

 

[audioops]

Thanks, L0sLobos and earthpeople.