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Amazon High Definition Music Streaming Service


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15 hours ago, PAR said:

Yes, it's appalling. Each band member in your example only made 4 million this summer from touring . Plus , of course, their other income streams. A  hand to mouth existence. And remember that just like you or me they have to pay their chauffeur, valet, personal cook and flower arranger out of this.

Get real. How many musicians/bands make that kind of money? A handful. The rest are lucky to make the equivalent of minimum wage. 

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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1 hour ago, firedog said:

Get real

Not my figures. I am just reacting to those proposed by Computer Audiophile.

 

Are they real? I think he may have been referring to the Rolling Stones.

 

Yes a few artists are paid exceptional, I would say unjustifiable, sums.  However , recording and royalties derived from it is not what music is exclusively about and musicians can, and do, make a decent or even good living without going near any of this.

 

My next door neighbour is a professional oboist. When single she was able to  buy a place like mine in London ( check property prices here) but has never made a commercial record. So she was and is living a decent lower middle class life on the back of her music making. Good on her.  After all people have been paid for making music for thousands of years. Recording is only 150 odd years old and perhaps that brief period when it became a leading light of cultural life ( mid 1960s to mid 1980s?) may now be over.

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34 minutes ago, PAR said:

Not my figures. I am just reacting to those proposed by Computer Audiophile.

 

Are they real? I think he may have been referring to the Rolling Stones.

 

Yes a few artists are paid exceptional, I would say unjustifiable, sums.  However , recording and royalties derived from it is not what music is exclusively about and musicians can, and do, make a decent or even good living without going near any of this.

 

My next door neighbour is a professional oboist. When single she was able to  buy a place like mine in London ( check property prices here) but has never made a commercial record. So she was and is living a decent lower middle class life on the back of her music making. Good on her.  After all people have been paid for making music for thousands of years. Recording is only 150 odd years old and perhaps that brief period when it became a leading light of cultural life ( mid 1960s to mid 1980s?) may now be over.

Again, you are cherry picking the small minority that doesn't reflect the majority. 
There are probably another 50 or 100  or 200 highly qualified oboists around the UK that can't get a job at all, or know early in life that there's no possibility of a career and give it up.  Does she have a permanent position? Ask her how many others interviewed for it when she got it.

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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32 minutes ago, firedog said:

Again, you are cherry picking the small minority that doesn't reflect the majority. 
There are probably another 50 or 100  or 200 highly qualified oboists around the UK that can't get a job at all

Yes, and that will always will be the case. All artists in whatever medium are fundamentally self appointed. Society does not create a job for someone just because they decide that they would be good at that job (whether they are or not). Just because there may be 200 qualified oboists does not mean that 200 orchestral positions have to be created to accommodate them.

 

Most artists, again in whatever medium, do manage to make ends meet even though it may not be exclusively from their artistic pursuits.  At the end of the day those artists that are popular will make money and possibly a lot. Those that are not popular will not. The latter do not "deserve" a living from their choice of career path.  If they cannot make a living from it, for whatever reason which may be as vague as current fashion or taste, then they are not economically viable and need to find an alternative, just like most people. I had to change my career  four times over my working life.

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17 minutes ago, PAR said:

Yes, and that will always will be the case. All artists in whatever medium are fundamentally self appointed. Society does not create a job for someone just because they decide that they would be good at that job (whether they are or not). Just because there may be 200 qualified oboists does not mean that 200 orchestral positions have to be created to accommodate them.

 

Most artists, again in whatever medium, do manage to make ends meet even though it may not be exclusively from their artistic pursuits.  At the end of the day those artists that are popular will make money and possibly a lot. Those that are not popular will not. The latter do not "deserve" a living from their choice of career path.  If they cannot make a living from it, for whatever reason which may be as vague as current fashion or taste, then they are not economically viable and need to find an alternative, just like most people. I had to change my career  four times over my working life.

So think honestly: are you pro corporation and anti-artist?
I didn't say artists "deserve" a living. But the system is setup (especially recording marketing and royalties) for 99% to make slave wages while the one percent make extremely high wages. There's no reason it "has to be that way".

The system is basically setup for them to fail economically so that someone else gets monopoly rents from their work. The royalty setup for streaming is a good example.

 

That system is created by society. There's nothing natural or obviously correct about it. 

 

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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It’s far too early in the piece to be excited by Amazon HD.

 

Apart from a browser , how to listen, on the preferred hardware? I see Rotel there what do they offer that’s tangible. Will other hardware vendors sound better/worse.

 

With streaming services, where’s the provenance mentioned, a sticky question answered by crickets.

 

If there are no downloads, then streaming will sound like all the other streaming services that don’t make any money, flat dull and lifeless.

So where’s Roon and Audirvana to manage the service. LOL , just 500 items on the playlist?

 

Anyways, the same can come for Apple, if they ever get their act together on Hires.

 

BTW, the hires logo on Amazon is not the same adopted by Japan, ah must be faux hires. No doubting the audio industry, if there’s a way to confuse the public, their job will never end, very good at going in all directions.

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4 hours ago, One and a half said:

BTW, the hires logo on Amazon is not the same adopted by Japan, ah must be faux hires. No doubting the audio industry, if there’s a way to confuse the public, their job will never end, very good at going in all directions.

Yes, I mentioned this over on AA earlier.  Amazon does not use hi-res or high-resolution anywhere. They are calling it HD ( CD resolution) and Ultra HD ( up to 24/192). Those phrases are familiar to the majority of people as they are also used for television resolutions.  I actually think that Amazon are clarifying rather than confusing things for the great majority of ordinary people . Of course it strikes at the Hi-Res campaign with its logo etc. However , outside of audiophiles, how many people do you know who have any idea what Hi-Res is all about? Do they care?

 

 

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4 hours ago, firedog said:

But the system is setup (especially recording marketing and royalties) for 99% to make slave wages while the one percent make extremely high wages

But they are not "wages" . Earning a living just about anywhere in the arts involves receiving income from multiple sources. In this case  not only streaming. Some sources pay more than others.  Which pay the most or the least can change over time. Currently succesful musical artists make more money from touring than from recordings.  That is the reverse of the situation in the 1970s to 1990s. Go back before then to, say,  the 1930s, 40s and 50s and touring or other live engagements were again the honey pot. 

 

Streaming is only one component making up a musicians' income. Right now , at what is the beginning of this new way of distributing music, the sums may be realtively small compared to other sources. As subscriber numbers grow and  new territories are added ( so far streaming is effectively limited  to Europe and the USA) income will expand. China is just about to start its first streaming service. Imagine how many subscribers that might attract and consequently what potential sums may be generated for internationally popular artists.

 

As an ex-recording industry professional who spent nearly thirty years dealing with this kind of issue I would point out that the reported sums of rate/stream etc. are not very illuminating. The important thing is the formula by which the payments have been calculated and the definitions used to describe its components. And that (or, rather, they) is unknown.

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3 minutes ago, Patrick Cleasby said:

The Hi-Res logo is intended for hardware

Thanks Patrick. That is, of course, doubly confusing. Imagine that you are in 1983 and all CD players carry the well known CD logo but none of the discs do! Then things would have become doubly confusing were SACD in a similar situation given two silver disc formats that look the same but have different specifications.

 

BTW some vendors certainly use the Hi-Res logo associated with their downloads e.g. Presto Classical.

 

Mind you if I had a pound for every person who asks what SACD is when I mention it then I would have several pounds 😊

 

Importantly Amazon are not even using the phrase Hi-Res.

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46 minutes ago, PAR said:

Thanks Patrick. That is, of course, doubly confusing. Imagine that you are in 1983 and all CD players carry the well known CD logo but none of the discs do! Then things would have become doubly confusing were SACD in a similar situation given two silver disc formats that look the same but have different specifications.

 

BTW some vendors certainly use the Hi-Res logo associated with their downloads e.g. Presto Classical.

 

Mind you if I had a pound for every person who asks what SACD is when I mention it then I would have several pounds 😊

 

Importantly Amazon are not even using the phrase Hi-Res.

 

Oh I know they do. Including Qobuz...

 

Just don't get Mark Waldrep on the subject...

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19 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

I surely hope that those in the audiophile community support the likes of Tidal and Qobuz over Amazon just for the sake of consciousness. A community that regularly discusses the ins and outs of 4, 5, and 6 figure speaker, DACs, cables etc shouldn't then try and save the equivalent of a fancy fuse or dc cable - or to put it in even more real world  perspective - the cost of about twenty five coffees out a year - to save on their music service. I'd rather support Jay-Z or some French entrepreneurs vs Bezos. 

 

FTR we have a family Prime account, use it, and living in Seattle I have numerous friends that work for Amazon, and my wife works for the 'devil' Microsoft, and when you go into the Amazon Music HQ in SF there's a sixteen foot big photograph of mine. So I'm not one of those anti-Amazon crazies, though their sins are well documented. If it ever does get integrated in a way that I could actually use with Roon and my system, I could possibly see it as an addendum to Qobuz, though Hi Res is overrated imo, and just how much time do we actually have to listen to THAT much music? I'm one who actually values silence as well. 

 

I still have plenty of friends who are happy with their old Yamaha or Marantz receivers and buying records by the oodles and playing them on their cheap turntables. A lot of them being musicians themselves. They are the ones who are truly keeping it alive. So stay true and please continue supporting the little guys. Keep the soundstage wide....

Agree Charles. 

 

Also, Qobuz caters to us, and that's worth its weight in gold. 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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This about says it all...

 

 

 
Sponsor: Chord Electronics
 
Joined: Oct 27, 2017
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vkvedam said: 
I second that! @Matt Bartlett
Well as I only found out about this new Amazon music service yesterday we will have to take a look and see what information we can get to see whether there is
an option for third party apps. Unfortunately at the moment Amazon don't seem to have a developers program like Tidal and Qobuz have.
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2 hours ago, PAR said:

But they are not "wages" . Earning a living just about anywhere in the arts involves receiving income from multiple sources. In this case  not only streaming. Some sources pay more than others.  Which pay the most or the least can change over time. Currently succesful musical artists make more money from touring than from recordings.  That is the reverse of the situation in the 1970s to 1990s. Go back before then to, say,  the 1930s, 40s and 50s and touring or other live engagements were again the honey pot. 

A band member I discussed this with a while ago said they made most of their money from commercial licensing. The revenue breakdown probably varies a lot depending on type of music, popularity level, and whatnot.

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I don't want to sound discouraging but you get paid when you get streamed. A couple of years ago Spotify ( I think) revealed that something like 80 % of the titles held on their servers are never accessed.

 

BTW, remember that you won't be paid the day after your title is streamed. It will be done at a distribution point. Depending on the licensing arrangements that might only be once or twice a year .

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5 hours ago, wgscott said:

Well, they do manage to put an awful lot of crap in their catalogue, like Pear Jam for Babies.

 

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You know @The Computer Audiophile probably raised his daughter on this album, right?

 

😉

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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