**Offer FLAC format in addition to (or instead of) WAV**
FLAC files are the same quality as WAV, but are much smaller and can include tags and album art.
br41n
shared this idea
Hello everybody. Today we introduced AIFF as a new lossless format that you can select during purchase. We’re hoping that this will address some of the functionality you’ve been asking for (metadata and album art in a lossless file). This forum will stay open so people can continue to vote for FLAC support and we would love to hear about your experiences using our AIFF downloads. For more information on why we started with AIFF, see this post: http://news.beatport.com/blog/2011/09/09/introducing-aiff-format/.
119 comments
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George commented
I found an album I wanted today on your website. I added it to my basket and went to check out the quality (I only consider it worth buying if it's lossless as it was mastered).
It jumped up a £ or so because you don't market your downloads with VAT (cheeky, but fine).
Ah, here we go, we want it lossless. Hmm, no FLAC? Fine, I'll convert it from WAV. *click*
+£7.50?!!!!!! The ALBUM itself was less than that. Suddenly £6.38 is £15.96. Great job guys, one lost sale here. Maybe if you learned to advertise stuff closer to the TRUE cost you would piss less people off and get some more sales.
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Ordemo
commented
To follow on, I buy WAV's from Juno or other places and convert them to AIFF's, it's much cheaper.
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Ordemo
commented
I think Beatport played it safe by offering AIFF rather than FLAC.
AIFF is unquestionably a lossless file format, FLAC is lossless as such but it is still a compressed file.
I refuse to buy music from Beatport now because of the expensive lossless "Upgrade" that they charge. Whether or not Beatport will charge a "Upgrade" fee for FLAC is debatable but I imagine that they will if they can get away with it, furthermore I think those who are requesting FLAC and moaning about the price of WAV are dreamers. FLAC will at some point be offered on Beatport but don't expect to be offered FLAC at MP3 prices, in my opinion you will be very lucky if this happens. -
politicalmachine
commented
Just get rid of the WAV file, if I have to pay a $1 extra, why should I be getting a lesser product with no tags? C'mon beatport! FLAC please.
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FilipePatricio
commented
Yeah what he didn't say was that the price is $1.00 extra on AIFF files. Thanks!
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triune
commented
It just seems logical that you would add a format that offers both id3 information and true lossless compression at the same time vs. offering one now, and one later. You could have killed two birds with one stone!
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Enpinion
commented
Yeah flac is better.
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Stuart Lambert
commented
FLAC is becoming standard, would make sense to support it.
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BuZZ-dEE
commented
flac :)
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Joen J. Olsen
commented
FLAC > AIFF. EOD.
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Higgins
commented
There is absolutely no reason to offer AIFF over FLAC. FLAC is essentially the industry standard for lossless music, since WAV doesn't support metadata+album art. Forcing customers to pay an entire dollar PER TRACK for lossless files is outrageous. "Storage and bandwidth" is a load of bull. I'd buy ALL of my music through Bandcamp if I could because they offer MANY different filetypes without ANY additional costs. I tried out your AIFF downloads last night, the metadata had to be redone and there was no album art.
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Henrik Wärleus
commented
FLAC has the best compression out there of all the los, it's open source, and great tagging support.
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Anonymous
commented
Yes please! I would be extremely happy to see FLAC being offered here!
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Adam Baxter
commented
I own hundreds of Beatport tracks and I'd like to own hundreds more. FLAC please.
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Moss
commented
It's simple, really. Give your customers what they want. Keep WAV, and give us FLAC as an option. And don't overcharge us on lossless formats. Your reasoning about "more storage space and bandwidth" requirements are totally absurd. It is not 1995. Such claims are laughable by today's standards.
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Djdarren
commented
Just looked at an album 100 tracks £13.99 in mp3 . To have have it in aiff an extra £100 !!!!!! this is taking the mick.
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Tych0
commented
Sorry Marc, it appears I did receive the metadata. It is Rekordbox, not Beatport that is the problem here.
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AdminBeatportMarc
(Admin, Beatport, LLC)
commented
Hello Tych0. I'm sorry you didn't receive metadata in your AIFF file. That information should be there and if it is not, we will resolve the issue as quickly as we can. Please contact our support team (support@beatport.com) so we can help you out directly.
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Tych0
commented
I'm assuming you went with aiff since Pioneer/Rekordbox supports it, which I use. So I decided to give the aiff format a try last night and paid the ridiculous handling fee, only to find there was no meta data, no album art on the files at all. What gives? I really feel ripped off here.
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Bob
commented
FLAC! We don't want AIFF. We want FLAC. And you can kiss my business (as well as many other people's business) goodbye if you think you can get off charging that much extra for a lossless file. It should be standard price or 5-10% more at MOST. There are no excuses for not doing this; bandwidth is especially not a valid reason. Neither is storage. Bandwidth and storage are MUCH cheaper now. It's time for our music quality to catch up with the times.