Listening to new releases on line:

Most record producers don’t seem to have websites. Among those that do, a few provide music samples online.

• Alliance didn’t have anything.
• Blue Square Recordings says it has previews, but doesn’t (clicking on one gives a 404).
• ESP
• Global didn’t have anything.
• Hearties Records doesn’t.
• HiHat has MP3 files that download first and play later.
• Rawhide/Buckskin says they’ll have previews, but they’re not ready yet.
• Rockin M has some RealAudio samples.

While Supreme Audio has a column for a RealAudio preview in their display, very few of the records actually have a RealAudio preview. (On the November tape, only one record has a preview (and that record happens to have an MP3 version, and also was released several months ago).

It looks like Shakedown Records is taking the most advantage of selling MP3s online; they’ve released MP3 versions of records from 1989 and 1992. See Supreme’s online MP3 page.

I think it’s great that Supreme Audio is selling MP3s on line, and I think it’ll be a really good way to get records that have been “out of print” back in the hands of callers. But I don’t get why I should pay the same price for an MP3 as I do for a 45 rpm…the whole point of an MP3 is that the production costs are way down so that the producer (and therefore the user) doesn’t have to pay for pressing vinyl. As Vic Ceder points on on his page about converting vinyl to MP3, MP3 uses a lossy compression algorithm. That means that sound quality is lost when a sound file is converted to an MP3 file. While that loss may not be noticeable if you just play the MP3 file, particularly on our not particularly hifi amplifiers, it will become noticeable if one needs to decompress the file back to some other format in order to change its pitch or tempo and then recompress back to an MP3. It’d be nice if Supreme (or other record distributors) would make an uncompressed version available so those of us who have the bandwidth to grab a 20MB file and the need to alter the original music. Otherwise, if the record is available, I’ll buy the record over the MP3, even though I’ll immediately convert it to a sound file on my computer. If no record is available, I’ll consider the MP3, particularly if I don’t need to alter it.