<img src="http://www.computeraudiophile.com/files/al.jpg" style="padding: 1pt 10pt 7pt 0pt;" align="left">CNET's Nate Lanxon published a piece today predicting Apple will offer lossless music downloads from the iTunes store within twelve months. Personally I think this is wishful thinking. Sure there are valid reasons why Apple would do this such as to fill up more disk space thus selling more iPods. But, I really disagree with Nate when he says, "...iTunes and the iPod is not only perfectly geared up for lossless downloads, but it has the most powerful industry shaker-upper behind it, and a heap of potential new customers gagging to hand over their cash..." Depending on what he is claiming Steve Jobs is behind, either iPod/iTunes or lossless downloads, is a big difference. I have yet to hear Steve Jobs even mention lossless downloads in a serious conversation. Perhaps my biggest disagreement is the last part of the statement about a heap of potential customers. It is pretty clear that audiophiles are a small percentage of the music buying population. Even a smaller percentage of these audiophiles would download from iTunes if/when lossless music is available. Sure "heap" is a very subjective term to describe a quantity, but I don't believe this article would exist without "heap" equating to a sizable percentage of music buyers. I really wish this would happen and I could download lossless music from my listening chair, but I'll believe it when I see it. Here is a snippet of the article available on cnet.co.uk.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Tuesday 18 December 2007
<strong>Next for Apple: Lossless iTunes Store</strong>
They say once you've had FLAC, you don't go back. It was certainly true for me. And now I have an inkling Apple will add lossless music downloads to the iTunes Store within the next 12 months.
Apple adopted AAC as its standard music download format, not only because the creator of MP3 has named it the superior successor to its creation, but because it also allows for the embedding of DRM -- the ubiquitously despised method for preventing unauthorised copying. But there's another reason.
Get the full story <a href="http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/natelanxon/0,139102300,49294808,00.htm">here</a>.
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