Rare and unreleased: why lossy music and why no seperate purchase?

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Soulrock2

The Fly
Joined
Sep 10, 2002
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Firstly: I love the fact that they have released these outtakes. But I think it's a bit unfair to the die-hard fans not to release the outtakes as seperate files. If those fans wanna buy the rare and unreleased tracks, they have to buy lotsa music they already have paid for. Also, they have paid for lossless music in the past! Why pay again for lossy music? That doesn't make sense, now does it?

Secondly: why the hell are they selling LOSSY music? I just listened to my brand new HTDAAB cd and it sounds much better than the mp3 cd-r. A band who thinks quality is important shouldn't sell unreleased tracks only in lossy format.

I really hope U2 will make these outtakes available to everyone in LOSSLESS format in the future, especially for all the fans who already spent lotsa money on every album and single in the past!
 
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I won't be spending money on the digital box set. mp3's are great to get to hear live concerts or songs that are newly leaked, but to have to listen to lossy on a regular basis.. :no: no way.
I went and bought HTDAAB today at lunch and the sound was so so much better than the leaks :drool:. I didn't want to leave my car to go back to work!
 
EPandAmerica said:
I went and bought HTDAAB today at lunch and the sound was so so much better than the leaks :drool:. I didn't want to leave my car to go back to work!

Me too...I had to literally put one hand on top of the other to press turn the key off my car.....

COBL and CFYT my favorites...Crumbs I liked already, but I did not realize how powerful COBL was!!

Great stuff.
 
Well, by nature, even though iTunes music store files are 128 kbit AAC, they are supposedly taken from the original master recordings. I would like to see 100% concrete proof of this, as I have heard horrible iTunes encodings before. No, they will not be as good as a CD... but you're getting almost 450 songs. The future will be digital music, there's no doubt about that. As soon as bandwidth catches up, they may up the quality. Your average person has no idea what 128kbit bitrate is, and therefore has no idea that they aren't as good quality.
 
stoven said:
Well, by nature, even though iTunes music store files are 128 kbit AAC, they are supposedly taken from the original master recordings. I would like to see 100% concrete proof of this, as I have heard horrible iTunes encodings before. No, they will not be as good as a CD... but you're getting almost 450 songs. The future will be digital music, there's no doubt about that. As soon as bandwidth catches up, they may up the quality. Your average person has no idea what 128kbit bitrate is, and therefore has no idea that they aren't as good quality.

You're actually getting about 400 songs, as a lot of them are repeated. WOWY single, WOWY on Joshua Tree, WOWY on Best of.

Its not worth it for the people that own all the CDs and singles already. They did not take these fans into account and blindly thought that a few things would entice them. Why should I spend $150 bucks on songs that I have already ripped at a better rate when I can legally?

Even the stuff that hasnt been released officially before like the Point Depot show and Boston 81 gig have been available on bootleg for years and these recordings are perfect, the Itunes version does not upgrade the bootlegs at all. The sound is exactly the same.
 
Well, I may be the type of fan that U2 was taking into account.

I don't have the time nor inclination to go & searched for every bootleg Cassette, CD, etc.

This Dset is perfect for me. Assessible for me.
Allows me to trade for stuff idon't have yet.

Ppl shouldn't complain when music trading is still available.
 
Well, you do have a choice here. I dont' know why you're all whining about it. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I'm sure U2 won't cry themselves to sleep at night. I think it was a good gesture by them.

Maybe they don't like it when people idolize them and their music to the point that they must have EVERY SINGLE SONG ever written and/or recorded on CD. These are the songs they saw fit to release, and it is in a convenient place for most people who do not have them. If you were to buy the un-released stuff for .99, it would cost more than $150. I totaled it up last night, all the stuff I didn't have without the albums, and it was going to cost more than the box set. So either buy it, or don't....
 
Then again, when U2 had released this in a physical format, many would still complain. Because then they still had to buy the boxset with all those songs they already have to get those rare songs. Only, a physical boxset would have been much more expensive.
It is the nature of boxsets that you buy a lot of material you already have to get a few songs you don't.

:shrug:

Marty
 
For a U2 fan living in Canada....where do I go to get my U2 iPod?

I understand that if I wanted to obtain some of these rare, unreleased or alternate version tracks I can go to the imusic store. It is sounding like some of them are "album" only tracks.

Any advice?:shrug:
 
stoven said:

Maybe they don't like it when people idolize them and their music to the point that they must have EVERY SINGLE SONG ever written and/or recorded on CD.

Is this the "stop me be4 I hurt myself again" syndrome?? :D
 
Shono said:
For a U2 fan living in Canada....where do I go to get my U2 iPod?

I understand that if I wanted to obtain some of these rare, unreleased or alternate version tracks I can go to the imusic store. It is sounding like some of them are "album" only tracks.

Any advice?:shrug:

Shono, the best advice I can give you to get the tracks you want is if they don't sell it on itunes,

Offer up some bartering options for ppl to exchange with you or watch out for any threads that offer the songs to ppl for free.


ps,
I think alot of us are annoyed @ all the free loaders around here.
I'm starting to understand what artists are talking about when it comes to music being illegallly acquired...
 
I'm just sayin... U2 can't possibly please everyone. The fanatics will go crazy about the fact that the box set is missing some oddball song. Big deal. If U2 released every single song they ever wrote, who knows how big the set would be... 5,000 songs, and it would take a week to download. Let's petition for them to release that one!! :|
 
I'm not griping, I think iPods are very cool, if they would have come out 10 or more years ago, I would have jumped at the chance to get one. And in time I may get one, it's just not a priority because I have most of the songs already, and I would rather spend that money following the tour.
 
at least theyre allowing us to individually buy everything thats been previously released. this helps me out as i dont have all the singles. some of the live songs are very good, well worth my 99 cents.
 
What some of you are forgetting is that if this were a traditional, physical box set, you wouldn't be able to buy any single tracks at all.

And really, these rare tracks are the types of tracks that you would never ever ever see sold as a stand-alone thing on CD, only in a "box set."

We're all spoiled by the ability to purchase a single track off a CD via iTunes, but I think we need to remember what a box set is by nature, and that box sets are really the only place a band is generally going to feel comfortable releasing such material. Maybe some of it is monetary, but I think a lot of it is that a band doesn't want a stand-alone package consisting only of "thrown away" material.
 
martha said:
I don't know what lossy means. Does it mean that something is lost when it's transferred digitally?

Yes. Average person won't notice. It'll drive audiophiles nuts though.

Who cares if the demos and outtakes are lossy? They're outtakes and demos, never mastered or mixed properly. Do you really need first rate sound on second rate music?
 
MrBrau1 said:


Yes. Average person won't notice. It'll drive audiophiles nuts though.

Who cares if the demos and outtakes are lossy? They're outtakes and demos, never mastered or mixed properly. Do you really need first rate sound on second rate music?

In fact, YES.
 
My only problem with not offering the previously unreleased material separately, is that it is practically begging people to dowload the songs illegally. Essentially they are asking U2 fans to pay $150 for a dozen or so songs they do not have already.
 
Alright, here's the deal. There are a TON of U2 fans who are not fanatics and don't even know something such as "passengers" exists. I didn't know about that for a long time, let alone melon, lemon, point depot concert, etc... I just know now about them, mostly from trading bootlegs. The average U2 fan has no idea these things exist. They may only own 2 or 3 albums. So $150 for EVERY album and single is really worth it to them. Therefore, they are not begging anybody to download these songs illegally. And if you do, you are not supporting the band that you claim to love so much.
 
I'm interested in who would have initially proposed the boxset be sold like this - would it have been Universal Records/Interscope, Principle Management, Apple or the boys themselves?
 

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