Overwritten.net
Community => Entertainment => Topic started by: MysterD on Thursday, December 26, 2013, 05:27:54 PM
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NEW -> 03-04-2014:
A few albums are 99 cents on Google Play to download in USA.
Beck - "Morning Phase" [2014] (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Beck_Morning_Phase?id=Bzbbouwtdgcqx3hgawrmu4n3lua&hl=en)
Daft Punk - "Discovery" [2001] (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Daft_Punk_Discovery?id=B4t6yqqvhnb2hy4st4uisjrcsrm&hl=en)
Drake - "Thank Me Later" [2010] (Explicit) (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Drake_Thank_Me_Later?id=B37w3mhs27ibujezfcv26idwooe&hl=en)
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OLD / DEAD DEALS -> 01-27-2013:
Ariana Grande - "My Everything" (Standard Edition) is FREE to download this week on Google Play MP3. Go get it. (https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Bm633v4dktsed2jsp76mk57qhli&PAffiliateID=1l3vadE)
Lorde - "Pure Heroine" (Regular Edition) album = $1.99 (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Lorde_Pure_Heroine?id=Bt3wef6icrzkkw2n24nfq53yrwy)
Drake - "Nothing Was The Same" (Regular Edition) album = $1.99 (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Drake_Nothing_Was_The_Same?id=Bqn5zdjkwi6ercbshfww2idmw4y)
Amy Winehouse - "Back To Black" album = $1.99 (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Amy_Winehouse_Back_To_Black?id=B4huojlcc4xmlurp6lgj3xkw6sy)
Lana Del Rey - "Once Upon A Dream" song = FREE download. (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Lana_Del_Rey_Once_Upon_a_Dream_from_Maleficent_Ori?id=Bnodj4drukcm3dmrw2h6gxaip3e)
ORIGINAL POST:
Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/music/collection/series_overview_theme_201041b_dis_play_picks?hl=en)is having album entire giveaway deals for:
Kanye's album "Yeezus" (https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=By5ojxdslc5zdiuflz25kgytgoi&tid=song-Trgaee2pzlbo46gxyew2qdncsqy&hl=en)
and Chvrches "Bones Of What You Believe (Standard Edition)" album. (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/CHVRCHES_The_Bones_Of_What_You_Believe?id=Bfoxbscvxeivg7fqjluszc3spra&hl=en)
Go get 'em!
(I already bought them two around Black Friday, on sale very cheap from Google Play, BTW).
There's also plenty of FREE songs they're giving away on the site, as well HERE (https://play.google.com/store/music/collection/series_overview_theme_201041b_dis_play_picks?hl=en) and ALSO HERE. (https://play.google.com/store/music/collection/series_overview_theme_2010406_thc_december_deals?hl=en)
They do this all the time w/ just giving songs away, by the way.
Go check 'em out.
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"Bought" them. Now to figure out how to download them....
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"Bought" them. Now to figure out how to download them....
You can jump into your Google account and go into your Music section; and right-click on them and download them piece by piece...
...But you can only do that limited number of times (2 per song).
Or, download the Google Music Manager Program and use that to download your tracks (unlimited # of DL's allowed there):
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1229970?hl=en
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As much as I hate Apple, I only buy music from iTunes because they sell them in AAC format. I can't believe everyone else sells MP3s only. AAC format is well-supported.
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Only place I buy from is Bandcamp. They offer FLAC and junk too.
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Lorde - "Pure Heroine" (Regular Edition) album = $1.99 (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Lorde_Pure_Heroine?id=Bt3wef6icrzkkw2n24nfq53yrwy)
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Katy Perry - "Prism (LP)" is currently FREE on Google Play. Go get it. (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Katy_Perry_PRISM?id=Bsq4z7h7ccqfdkyzu5ybjf6hbdy)
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I have it added to my account because it was free. I still haven't really used the google music store any.
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I use Google Music, but only the free thing where you can upload your library and stream it on any device. That's pretty handy.
It still blows my mind that both Amazon MP3 and Google Music are MP3-only. Google Music even takes my AAC-encoded files and transcodes them to MP3. It's 320 kbps, but still, you notice the loss in fidelity.
I'm still sort of old school. I generally buy CDs and rip them to TAK and AAC (using the Nero encoder) at the same time. If I only want one song, I buy from iTunes because they are AAC.
MP3 is ancient technology! Get with the times people! AAC is now well supported on virtually every device!
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Yeah its amazing MP3 is sticking around. Lots of new and better formats. But I guess when everything supports MP3s and any compressed music people call "MP3" even when they aren't...you just keep it around.
I used to encode everything to Ogg because I am a fucking rebel!
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MP3 is okay. I mean it's pretty decent at 160 kbps and I can't discern a difference at 192 kbps or beyond, but it flat out sucks at 128 kbps and lower.
I thought about switching to Ogg Vorbis recently because it's pretty well-supported now, but I found out that iOS devices can't natively play it. I use Android and it's supported natively there, but since it isn't in iOS I felt that support just isn't quite where it needs to be for me to feel comfortable with it. Plus, I don't think Google Music will take Vorbis files.
AAC works well enough. I'm very happy with its quality at all bitrates and support is ubiquitous these days. I just isn't free (as in "freedom").
I mentioned TAK in my previous post. I'm not sure if anyone here is familiar with it. It's a lossless format like FLAC, but in general it encodes faster, decodes faster, and has greater compression. The author was very forward thinking, building in streaming and 24/192 audio support from the beginning. The only thing is that it's Windows-only, has virtually (actually?) nil hardware support, and is not free (as in "freedom"). The creator has made general statements about a desire to make TAK open source, but he's been saying that for years now. To me, it doesn't matter as I use lossy codecs on my players and TAK is just a reference archive. As long as I have a Windows machine and the decoder EXE handy, I can decode the files.
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I use FLAC now whenever possible, and it's supported in the ancient Winamp 2 (via plugin) that still serves as my main music player. I hadn't heard of TAK. If it's more efficient, I'll look into it, though I doubt it supports Winamp 2.
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There is a Winamp plugin for TAK. I use it with Winamp 5. I'm not sure if it works with Winamp 2.
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I tested the plugin with Winamp 2.91, 5.34 and 5.5. When using v 5.34 and higher with the default skin, seeking seemed to be delayed. Most probably this only regards to the position indicator, the playback seems to start immediately. After switching to the classic skin, any delay was gone.
http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=89610&st=0
I haven't installed it yet, or tracked down any source material to test it, but it looks promising so far. Thanks for the heads up.
Edit: Newest version seems to be 2.3.0, linked here (http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=TAK).
Edit 2: There seems to be zero awareness of this format as far as source material. Where I can find oodles of FLACs and the occasional APE, I cannot for the Google-whipping life of me find a single sample of encoded TAK material out there. And after running into this comparison chart (http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison) of lossless codecs, frankly I've lost interest.
I'd still like to see it work in Winamp, though, just for giggles. I'm just not willing to set up and use the encoder to get there just yet. I don't see the advantage in the effort at this point.
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Edit 2: There seems to be zero awareness of this format as far as source material. Where I can find oodles of FLACs and the occasional APE, I cannot for the Google-whipping life of me find a single sample of encoded TAK material out there. And after running into this comparison chart (http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison) of lossless codecs, frankly I've lost interest.
HydrogenAudio is the best resource on the Internet for audio codecs. TAK was introduced to the world by its author there. HA members were initially enamored by its performance and features but interest waned over time because the author was reluctant to open the source code, even though the author is quite aware that failure to at least open the decoder source code means that the format probably won't gain any real traction. HA members, many of them Linux users, sort of lost patience with the author and felt that it was just a waste of their energy being excited about TAK.
TAK is better than FLAC for my use case (losslessly archiving music on a Windows PC), but it's not for everyone. If you are a FOSS advocate, use Mac OS X or Linux, or want to play losslessly-encoded audio files on a hardware device, TAK is definitely not the way to go. Even if you only need to losslessly archive music but are already using FLAC, there isn't a huge reason to switch. But if you are in a position where you are a Windows-only user and want to start archiving CDs using a lossless audio format, I would recommend TAK over FLAC. The fact that many people don't use it is irrelevant from an archiving perspective.
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Well, the thing is that I don't consider lossless encoding to be just for archiving anymore--not in the age of multi-terabyte hard drives. I prefer the music I play to be in a lossless format, rather than even the best of the lossy ones. I can afford a 300MB CD rip, and I know I can transform that rip back into a Redbook CD if ever I want to, without loss.
And for such, it makes the most sense to stick to the format with the most support. Thanks anyway. I now know something I didn't before, and that's always a good thing.
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Well there are certainly many audio formats to chose from, so I am pretty sure every possible use case has an optimal choice. Yours isn't TAK. No biggie. :)
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Ariana Grande - "My Everything" (Standard Edition) is FREE to download this week on Google Play MP3. Go get it. (https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Bm633v4dktsed2jsp76mk57qhli&PAffiliateID=1l3vadE)
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A few albums are 99 cents on Google Play to download in USA.
Beck - "Morning Phase" [2014] (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Beck_Morning_Phase?id=Bzbbouwtdgcqx3hgawrmu4n3lua&hl=en)
Daft Punk - "Discovery" [2001] (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Daft_Punk_Discovery?id=B4t6yqqvhnb2hy4st4uisjrcsrm&hl=en)
Drake - "Thank Me Later" [2010] (Explicit) (https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Drake_Thank_Me_Later?id=B37w3mhs27ibujezfcv26idwooe&hl=en)