Bowers & Wilkins, or as they are more likely known to most, B&W, have started a music club partnering with none other than Peter Gabriel and his Real World Records. The idea is to offer music in lossless compression to those [of us] who twitch over the MP3 downloads that are so popular. Bandwidth is soaring and disk space googolic – let us have music in its pure form and not in a tin can. We can take it!
Every month a new album will be published for download in Apple Lossless or Flac, ready to be put to CD or thrown straight at your media streamer; all at a yearly subscription rate equalling roughly a mere 5 or 6 CD albums. So, if you like being subjected to something new once in a while, this is cheap whichever way you look at it; and bloody good quality to boot. Last month featured Little Axe – this month Grindhouse (mondo cane) and the next is Gwyneth Herbert. A truly varied selection.
Oh – the copy cat thing? Super cool blog spot Download Squad posted this this morning.
Did I say lossless compression enough? Take a look at the cover art you get with most download services. If it is even there it is usually restricted to a measly thumbnail of the cover. Even that is lossless in B&W’s club… you can download an actual booklet or insert with every CD. Printing it can be a bit of a challenge, though. But that is hardly their fault. No, this is going to be very, very nice.
Thumbs up! And let us have some copy cats already!
CD drive
Wifi
Flac audio
Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support
Video