Digitally downloaded music has become the norm for the music industry. But there are some things that may frighten you about this trend. In order to fit all these music files on your devices (and to save on bandwidth cost) download services are not selling you the whole song. In fact, many services are only selling you a fraction of it for the same price!

Let me explain, when you purchase a CD you have three options...

.....1) Play the CD in a stand alone player (Best quality)

.....2) Rip the music in a lossy compression format (Ideal for portable music devices)

.....3) Rip the music in a lossless format (Best Quality)

With option 1, the music on the disk is uncompressed so it sounds great on a decent stereo. The same is true for option 3 since a lossless MP3/FLAC/WMA etc… is a direct uncompressed representation of the disk (Typically 1,000+kbs).

Now for the sad part…When you purchase a music files off of iTunes (or any service) you receive a files that is only 128kbs (or 256kbs if it’s DRM free). If you were to play that on a decent stereo it would sound flat and hollow. The clarity would be lost in the compression.

As a music lover is that how you want the industry to continue? Low quality music files for the same price as a CD? (We don’t even have to factor in the DRM) Just some food for though. And before I forget, I own a Zune 30 which I use wma 196kbs files and a home stereo which I use wma lossless.