Looking for a legal, high quality music download service

[MercurySteam]

So this morning my dad tells me because I have soooooo much free time on my hands that I should look for an online store for him that provides 24-bit .FLAC for download (legal, of course). So here's what I've figured we need:

-High quality tracks to choose from
-Large library of songs
-Legal music service
-Support for countries outside the US


If anybody knows a site which fits the profile then I'd be very grateful.

 

[MrTub]

Well I found this wikipedia article

Wiki [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_stores]

Just use search for Flac and you will find stores that sells flac.


Two examples is

http://www.fairsharemusic.com/ [Half of their profits goes to charity of your choice]
http://bandcamp.com/


I just want to point out that I've personally never bought from any of these shops so I would recommend that you try to find a review of the sites before buying

 

[MercurySteam]

http://www.fairsharemusic.com/
http://bandcamp.com/

I'm looking at Bandcamp right now but I don't think Fairshare will allow people from Australia yo use their service, plus their .FLAC library is tiny.

 

[MrTub]

http://www.fairsharemusic.com/
http://bandcamp.com/

I'm looking at Bandcamp right now but I don't think Fairshare will allow people from Australia yo use their service, plus their .FLAC library is tiny.

Yeah seems that Fairshare only sells to Europe & North america.

I do not understand why flac is so rare =/.

Oh I found a new site that sells to australia.

http://www.linnrecords.com/index.aspx


Btw what kind of music does he like?

 

[MercurySteam]

http://www.fairsharemusic.com/
http://bandcamp.com/

I'm looking at Bandcamp right now but I don't think Fairshare will allow people from Australia yo use their service, plus their .FLAC library is tiny.

I do not understand why flac is so rare =/.

Oh I found a new site that sells to australia.

http://www.linnrecords.com/index.aspx


Btw what kind of music does he like?

I explained to him that there's no demand for .FLAC when high bitrate .MP3 files are good enough for most people.

He usually listens to older music and some classical music. Basically anything you'd hear on 101.7 WSFM.

 

[Esotera]

Jamendo is fairly good, and you can also try ClearBits. The music is all certified as creative-commons/other, so it's funded by nothing/donations.

 

[xedi]

As suggested, bandcamp is pretty good, you can also download free .flac from some artists like lumber lung.

As for why .flac is so rare: People don't know about it and don't need it. Even many computer literate have not heard about it and the whole world uses mp3. MP3 is good enough for most people, high quality mp3 are virtually indistinguishable from .flac when listening even on good equipment. The only reason I use .flac is to have an original lossless file to ensure archivability. Many people don't see anything wrong with mp3 because it sounds good and with mp3 you are ensured that every device will work with it. E.g. the world uses ipods and thus the enforced itunes. Itunes does not support .flac and will only accept mp3 and then force the conversion to apple's format. Why should people use .flac if it doesn't work with their apple stuff and does not give massive advantages?

 

[MercurySteam]

As for why .flac is so rare: People don't know about it and don't need it. Even many computer literate have not heard about it and the whole world uses mp3. MP3 is good enough for most people, high quality mp3 are virtually indistinguishable from .flac when listening even on good equipment. The only reason I use .flac is to have an original lossless file to ensure archivability. Many people don't see anything wrong with mp3 because it sounds good and with mp3 you are ensured that every device will work with it. E.g. the world uses ipods and thus the enforced itunes. Itunes does not support .flac and will only accept mp3 and then force the conversion to apple's format. Why should people use .flac if it doesn't work with their apple stuff and does not give massive advantages?

The reason my dad wants the best quality music is because he works for the audio/visual industry. We have a $20,000 CD player and a $50,000 stereo system. Now of course he could just go out and buy the CDs but, it's not as convenient as a digital store, and even then your music library isn't well organized. At this point you can either buy the discs, and find a very expensive machine to rip all your CDs to .FLAC format and then spend $20,000 for a media server to store them on, or you can (like my dad) find a digital store to download .FLAC files from and then put them on a MacBook or laptop and stream your music to the stereo system. Even then, .FLAC files will sound the same as regular music files if you don't use a digital audio connection like optical or S/PDIF, which I'm still trying to figure out if any laptops even have that connection.

This whole thing is giving me a headace

 

[xedi]

Some laptops have a digital audio output, often combined with other ports. In case yours does not you can buy an external sound card which should have one and has some other advantages as well.

And yeah, I understand why people use it, I use it myself, it was a reply to the question why it is not more popular.