The Trouble With Digital Music Distribution

Despite living in the download era and having a whole networked music streaming home setup and an iPod, I still buy CDs. I rarely listen to them - they go straight onto the streamer (Sonos) and then they sit on a shelf - but I still like buying CDs. They're the highest bitrate you can buy (for most releases), and they have packaging with artwork and a back cover and inlay that expands the graphic design concept for the release, sleeve notes, lyric sheets etc. Occasionally I'll buy digital stuff if it's the only way it's available (eg. digital-only singles and EPs, live show downloads), but for albums it's CD all the way, really out of necessity.

So I recently participated in an experiment with the new Radiohead record (King of Limbs). They were offering it as a lossless download, and six weeks before the physical release. Same price as a CD from an internet retailer, but with none of the manufacturing or distribution chain taking a cut. And of course, no reliance on the postman or a trip to the shops. Anyway, I figured I'd try it. The results were slightly disappointing: the music, well that's pretty cool minimalistic electronic noodling, but the distribution needs more thought.

I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who remembers actually going to a record store and buying music on real actual bits of plastic and generally having something that represents the sounds coming from the speakers. If you grew up on planet download then skip this and go trawl the iTunes store and torrent sites.

Here's what's wrong with Radiohead's approach, and what really needs to change before I'll change my buying habits.

• The Format. The download is available in two flavours: MP3 (high 320kbps bitrate but still compressed) or WAV (pretty universal but no tagging info). If it's available in CD quality 1400kbps, that's what I want. The lack of a decent lossless format option (eg. FLAC) is baffling. Metallica, Bad Religion, NIN etc. have shown the way by providing FLAC downloads. OK, the WAV came in a ZIP so the download isn't huge (probably the same size as the FLAC would have been) but WAV is just a terrible format, because there's no tagging info and the files are huge. There's track numbers and song titles in the filenames, and that's it. I had to waste my time with Foobar pasting tagging info into the tracks so my player (Sonos) had something to work with. And really, after ten years of digital music files, I just expect them to have tagging info. It's actually less effort for me to unwrap a CD and rip it with EAC than to deal with a bundle of WAV files. CD 1, digital 0.
  
• What's In The Box? So I have the music and whatever track titles I can ascertain from filenames, and a nice hi-res JPEG of the front cover artwork, and that's it. No equivalent of the sleeve or booklet. Hell, I'm used to getting those digital booklet PDFs with downloads from the iTunes store. The MP3 release is apparently the same (don't know for sure). Maybe Radiohead want to give you the music and nothing else to distract from it, maybe they think booklets are relics for physical releases, maybe the music's ready but the design (apart from the front cover artwork) is still pending. Whatever, CD 2, digital 0.
  
• The Shop. When I buy music, I can go to online retailers like Amazon, Play, iTunes Store, or real places like HMV or the local independent record shop, wherever. I had to go to Radiohead's own store to buy this (or wait six weeks until it's everywhere). Not just Radiohead's store actually (the way that most bands have a store these days), but Radiohead's "store for buying this one record". And sign up and enter my credit card details and all that. And any savings from cutting out the middlemen, well I don't see them. A record is still worth it for the nine bucks I paid, but when I'm getting less of an experience than the CD and I appear to be paying fewer people for that privilege, well it's hard to champion going straight to the band for what feels like a "paid for torrent". CD 3, digital 0.
  

Bits Of Plastic

Hey, music is all just digital files, and if I could get the digital equivalent of those shelves full of CDs I would, but I can't help feel a little underwhelmed by this release. A "live bootleg" download is one thing, a studio album is something else. I suppose the inlay info is a web search away, but paying for a bunch of music-and-nothing-else files is still an adjustment. In some ways, this release reminds me of my early music listening days when I'd have a C-90 cassette of an album with just the music and maybe the tracklisting scrawled on the case (although the download is better quality and the band now gets paid).

Digital music distribution has mostly been a story of missed opportunities, from low quality broken formats winning out, to the devaluing of the album experience (no artwork/booklet/package and the cherry-picking of tracks onto playlists). The bandwidth is there for lossless (downloads if not streaming), even if most people are happy with their music compressed and low-quality and playing through tiny speakers. Even if most music playing applications aren't really equipped to handle a track in multiple formats, the biggest record store in the world (iTunes store) showed potential with the "iTunes plus" dual-format idea, slow upping of the available quality, and recent rumours of higher quality formats. And what's stopping someone like Amazon offering a record in CD, MP3-with-PDF and FLAC-with-PDF?

Right now there's all sorts of rumours going around about apple and possible 24-bit masters either cropping up in the iTunes store, or being used as the source for 256kbps MP3s, or something. Certainly a "better than CD" quality format would be welcome, but as persuading the vast majority to upgrade from low-quality MP3s to the 25-year-old CD format is hard, don't see it happening soon.

So back to Radiohead. They get points for a lossless download option. But it's not enough. The WAV format choice is just wrong and the lack of any booklet or package is infuriating. You have to assume Radiohead considered why people still buy CDs when deciding on a lossless download. MP3 isn't enough for music fans like me. We want the "CD without having to reach for the physical CD" experience on our home music servers. When will bands/labels start properly catering for us?