this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Buying music outright helps support the artists, too.
Qobuz
Bandcamp
Never heard of qobuz before. What exactly is this Hi-Res and why is it more expensive than a CD?
Hi-res audio is up to 192kHz sampling, much higher than the 44.1kHz sampling of CDs (number of times per second the input soundwave is sampled), and a bit depth of 24bits, compared to CDs 16bit (value of the sample). This produces much larger file sizes, but also better definition to the sound of those songs. If you're listening on high quality audio equipment, you will notice this difference.
Thanks for the explanation. So I guess they have access to the original files then?
Yes, they are essentially the master files that would normally be downsampled to 16-bit fit on a standard CD. However, the audiophile industry is plagued by snake oil salesmen and relies heavily on the placebo effect to sell people fantastically overpriced equipment.
When the original engineers chose 44.1 KHz @ 16-bit as the CD standard, they did so because this allows the excess information that was originally recorded to be discarded without it impacting how it sounds to the human ear. If you are interested in reading an explanation of why there is every reason to be skeptical of hi-res audio, read this article by an engineer who worked on the FLAC and Vorbis digital audio formats.
Thank you for the explanation. Yes I'm sure that I won't hear a difference even though I have good headphones and speakers. I was just curious and didn't know they would have access to the master files
If you're interested, Qobuz has a free trial to their streaming subscription.
They don't have as good an interface as others or good recommendations, but the library is pretty good. Besides some more obscure stuff, they have everything I love.
And if you're interested in keeping stuff offline, there's a few Python scripts that use their API to download the high quality files. Makes it pretty trivial to make a library of offline, high-res music.