The iTunes LP Shortcoming
13 September 2009 // Filed under Applications + iTunes
An article by Jay Robinson analyzes the new iTunes LP format which, in part, seeks to revive full album sales by including various extra features which are reminiscent to the days of yore when people bought full LPs and cherished them because of the supplementary experience provided by the sleeve notes and vast amounts of images (those days are not dead yet, BTW – you can also get Porcupine Tree’s latest album on iTunes, or order the CD from Amazon). These extras include artwork, detailed liner notes, videos as well as an array of other “stuff” that might make people interested in buying the album as a package rather than that one song they really like. Robinson analyzes both the user experience with the new LP format, which he describes as well thought out and engaging for the most part, and takes an initial dive into the internals of the .ITLP package which consists of little more than a .plist file, some HTML and CSS files, and various media files.
The best news is that there isn’t a hint of Flash to be found, and the various animations, which are comprised of CSS3, are incredibly rich.
But Apple and the labels are seemingly missing the entire point with this new format. Sure, the extras are a nice bonus to the music, but for those who are interested in buying a “Special Edition” of a particular album, 256k AAC is likely not going to be high enough fidelity. I would have hoped for Apple Lossless which, at about ~60% of the size of an AIFF or WAV file, loses size, but not quality. It is identical to what one would hear if listening to a CD. If I’m intrigued enough in a band to want extra content to go along with a particular album (otherwise I could just buy the album at a reduced cost), that enthusiasm is drastically tempered by highly compressed AAC quality audio files. In fact, any impulse to buy an iTunes LP is completely erased, regardless of how great the extra content may be.
Audio fidelity is the single reason why I don’t buy from digital media outlets any longer, and a few videos and liner notes aren’t going to change that. I understand that most people generally can’t tell the difference between 256k AAC and any of the various lossless formats, myself included, but at times the differences are stark, especially when there is layering in the sound field – the field sounds fairly empty in comparison to a lossless compression scheme – or the production of the music tends towards higher frequencies (Lamb of God’s Sacrament is a great example where just about everyone for whom I have played both the iTunes version and an Apple Lossless version ripped from the CD immediately notices the “digital wash” in the high pitched cymbal work by Chris Adler – in short it sounds terrible).
If the iTunes LP experience is supposed to be about a rich media experience to supplement the mediocre quality of the music provided by iTunes for existing iTunes customers who have tended more towards single track purchases than full album purchases, I’m sure it will work wonderfully. But if the point is to lure CD buying holdouts towards a digital medium, the low quality of the audio files will spoil their plans.
2009-09-13 :: Christopher Williams