Just put together some notes on music compression. How the landscape has changed over the years. Just suggested to a client that he buys a 1Tb drive. 1Tb - bloody amazing size. Does he need it? Probably not but it will just be a few pounds more than a 500 Gb drive, so why not?
OK, hard drives are silly cheap, what does that mean now that the far horizon shows Apples streaming music service heading our way? The freebie is that if they detect more compressed music in your library they will “upgrade” your stored tracks to the iCloud alternative of 256 kbps. So, does that mean you should switch back to ripping music at 128 kbps?
Err, no.
First the upgrade applies only to music players to which music can be streamed. These will be iOS devices - the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Not the hard drive based iPod Classic range, these will continue to be synced via iTunes from the music on your hard drive. Apple isn’t offering to replace or upgrade any of that.
Second, when the service launches, people are going to be amazed at the volume of music that isn’t in iTunes Music Store. Yes, there is a vast amount under the Apple umbrella, but there’s a lot that isn’t. That which Apple doesn’t already have a copy of will have to be uploaded from you to them.
Third, mobile phone companies are going to hit the roof. In a year or two all those kids on the school bus home will be listening to music on their iPhones not from its store but streamed across the airwaves courtesy of Vodafone, Orange and their peers. Can you imagine how that will hit their capacity?
My mobile phone has an all the data you can eat feature, just wait till be start to talk about 6,12, or more hours of music streaming.
So stick with 256 Kbps AAC, or Apple Lossless, or AIFF. You won’t regret it.
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