**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/.
114 comments
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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.
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neuron
commented
is this a joke!? the perennial flac carrot dangled in front of beatport users!?
I had to lol at the beatportal article on aiff which mentioned FLAC being "not very popular". give me a break. It was the second highest scoring issue on the beta testing feedback forum, and beatport didnt even deign to respond in the slightest to it's customers about the issue. You guys must make a metric $hitload of cash on wav fees, and that's your right as a business, but the continued disrespect shown to your customers over the flac and excessive "wav handling fee" issues is disgusting.ripping off both artists and your customers for your own profit - i sincerely hope you guys find some decency and lift your game...
so go on, be honest beatport, do you have ANY intention of ever introducing cheaper priced flac files? you know very well the support is there for it, or are you just yanking our chains?
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sy
commented
@ KMF Hey man take a scan down here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/cannot_import_flac_files_with_embedded_cover_art
Its just little things like this that really annoy me about FLAC support via mac, but yes you are right that there are option (like I say xACT is pretty alright) but for standard players I would like someone to develop foobar for the mac platform (just my opinion for my personal tastes). -
sy
commented
@KMF I'm the same man but songbird isn't on par with Foobar - it wont even show imeded cover art it can only source it from the net (look on the songbird forums with regards to FLAC the developers didn't even know that you can imded art in FLAC. It's shows MP3 art fine). As far as mixing I use Trakor as well. Also, there is a great encoder/decoder and multi tagger for mac called xACT if you have not checked it out it pretty decent. So I dont disagree with you but my main point was that going from PC to Mac that was the main thing I noticed where there are still some areas that need ironing out for full FLAC support. AIFF I see as a pointless option. At one point (back in time as far as I am aware) you could just change a file from .wav to .aiff until they changed the container for the file (I'm no expert but I am sure I read that somewhere). I would personally like to see wav prices drop to a fair price and then the option to download wavs as flacs.
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KMF
commented
@sy
I'm a Mac user but for playing FLAC files there are many music players as songbird. Same story for mixing, for example i use traktor.
So, where is the problem to use mac os x?
And, if you want to listen your FLAC files on the go, there are many player as Philips GoGear and many Samsung players.AIFF isn't supported as FLAC.
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symplec
commented
FLAC is definitely preferable to AIFF. At the very least, the metadata in WAVs would make it easier to convert between WAV and FLAC.