Preferred music formats
 

All,

I've acquired permission to make a moderately sized collection of music (800-1000 tracks - I've not counted them yet) available on Gnutella. Nothing terribly exciting, mostly live performances by professional but less-well known artists, but it'll eke the percentage of legit content that little bit closer to a level acceptable to the lawmakers.

The collection is currently in a proprietary high quality format unsuitable for sharing. My first instinct would be to to offer them as low quality (~120kbps) and medium quality (~240kbps) Ogg Vorbis files. However, a quick search pulled up very few examples of the format on the Gnet, it's pretty much mp3 as far as the eye can see. Is the mp3 format so ubiquitous that it's worth paying the license fees to use, or is the free Ogg Vorbis format acceptable ?

All opinions welcome.

I find, with either BearShare or Shareaza, many many people sharing a very wide variety of .ogg files...
.ape is also out there in ever-growing numbers...

As far as .mp3 is concerned for your specific intensions...
If I understand you correctly you are talking about making available some rare material. If that is the case, and it was me doing it (as I actually have ;) ), I would ONLY use 320kbps for the .mp3s... Why ? Because there is no point in starting off anywhere but with the highest quality... In fact, I would do them .mp3 vbr at the highest level.
Let the 'others' screw up the sound even more than .mp3 does anyway !!! Someone else wants a smaller file, that's their problem !
:eek:

It would be nice to know that you did your best in not only presenting 'new' material to the sharing world but, that it was done with quality in mind as well.

I like my 128kbps mp3 files, they are okay for listening to them. You don't usually hear the difference unless you compare them directly. - Of course some bad encoders manage to screw up 128kbps mp3s pretty badly.

Okay, I'm getting conflicting advice both here and elsewhere.

The most popular option would seem to be a low-quality mp3 (192kbps = 7MB per 5 minute track) and a high-quailty ogg (256kbps = 9MB per 5 minute track). I'm keen to 'get it right' as I won't be able to produce higher-quailty versions once access to the equipment capable of reading the original tapes is lost. I just don't have the facilities to archive copies on DAT tape or offer more than 3MB/minute to the material.

The copyright holder is wary of licensing costs involved with the mp3 format but is willing to allow mp3 distribution on the Internet if covered by a suitable indemnity contract.

And...

If space on your HDD is an issue, than use

Monkey's Audio .ape compression...

I've tested files using cda to .ape to .wav to .ape and back to .wav... Tested them with gear from a TV station engineer friend of mine... Gear that costs more than most houses !!!...

It really is, for all practical purposes, 'lossless' !

btw, 'high-quality' .ogg is NOT 256kbps... Higher-quality .ogg starts at a min of 455kbps !

Also, who cares what is 'popular' in terms of 'size' ?
I thought the primary purpose was to present and preserve rare or semi-rare files ?
:confused:

Except when using .ape, you cannot get the 'quality' back so why start 'low' ?

Keeping in my the original purpose of this discussion, it is a wonderful thing to be able to introduce 'legal' material to the filesharing community !!! Nice stuff to do !
So, do it to the max !

topbanana --this is just a quick thanks for your efforts on the legitimacy front. The compressed graphic and sheet music collections you told us about last year still account for ~75% of my shares.

What do you think of adding past and future collections to the magnet db?

While I appreciate the point made - that any lossy compression of source material is irrevocable - I think it's important to consider the role file-sharing systems play in the spectrum of data storage and retrieval mechanisms.

Now, if resources permitted, the ideal method of preserving and presenting content such as the collection of recordings discussed above would be something along the lines of the Gutenberg project - a set of widely mirrored true-to-the-original files, a searchable index and a website of meta-information. Such a system is very costly to set up and maintain, requring money for bandwidth and hundreds of hours of effort.

At the other end of the scale is the typical fate of realtively upopular resources - a box of unreadable tapes in some enthusiast's attic. Or worse, landfill.

Where p2p file-sharing systems excel (or will do if legal issues caused by copyright abusers stop hampering their popularity) is in providing an option between thse two extremes. Material can be made available online easily and cheaply, albeit with a minimum of metadata and no index. The materials persistance only guaranteed if it is popular - the day the last person sharing it decides that they are no longer willing to donate their disk space and bandwidth to the material it will be gone.

It's a trade-off. I haven't the resources to do the 'right' thing of properly archiving the material, but I'm not willing to simply let it vanish. This trade-off extends to having to take a pragmatic approach to bandwith/quality issues. Yes, it'd be marvellous to not have to permenantly degrade the recordings, but a box of CDs in my attic would be of as little use as a box of tapes. All I can do is make the best of the meagre resources I can spare (here about 3MB/minute) and try to ensure the collections permenance by providing it in popular formats, thereby maximising the chance that others will propagate it.

Sadly I can't meet the licensing requirements laid out by magnetmix. Almost all of the stuff I share is GPL or public domain proper - it's not in my power to transfer ownership of it to LimeWire LLC.

sorry--I meant http://www.magnetdb.com/ as in trap_jaw's signature.

I thought magnetmix only requires that LimeWire LLC gets a license to transmit (the TofS says "You own and maintain all copyrights") . . . the listings show public domain texts (Shakespeare); Docktorow's Magic Kingdom, which set a precedent in publishing, and even a game owned by the US Army.

Anyway, magnet listings only help with distribution, not format or storage.