I'd buy Apple Lossless songs!

Especially if you can downconvert them later. Even the burn and rip a CD method would be fine, as there would be no quality loss- it'd be the same as ripping from the original CD. Plus that would allow you to get DRM free music without a lossy transcoding step.

I hope this happens!

I think this would be agreat idea, considering a lot of what keeps me from downloading most of my music from iTunes is the somewhat low audio quality. Instead of (or in addition to) putting lossless files for sale, they should just do AAC, but at a higher quality, like 320 (where I rip all my CDs).

I guess that new content may be in Apple Lossless (with a Fairplay wrapper), but it will take a longer time to transition the older content (the millions of songs) from 128kbps AAC to Apple Lossless.

If they're distributing it now, it might not be in effect until later this year, or even next year.

I would have been happy with 256kbps AAC, which would have been practically indistinguishable from CD quality for 99.9% of people. I actually only rip my CDs to 160kbps VBR AAC as it is now, it's good enough on the iPod.

What record company has a big mouth,AI?

Great news.

Either Apple could start selling Lossless, or they could be using these files as the basis for an allofmp3-style system, whereby you set in iTunes prefs what bitrate you'd like, and the Music Store automatically down-converts the Lossless files before they are sent to you.

It would take a bit longer, surely, but it would be a wonderful feature. That way, if you're happy with 128k and the quick downloads, cool. If you don't mind putting up with longer downloads, you can go for higher bitrate or Lossless.

A+ news (if true).

I see it as Apple being able to have a "master" copy of the record that they can convert to whatever format is being utilized at the time. For example, a new format comes along that rivals AAC. So Apple automates the process of converting the lossless files to this new format.

Hey,

Crees! has it right by my book. I have always assumed that Apple uses Apple Lossless as the master database of ALL their online music. if and when the iTunes music store moves to a new encryption standard (whether it is AAC 2.0 or just a higher bandwidth version, or, as suggested above they allow multiple formats by user choice) it is these lossless masters that would be the source for the new format.

This new feature in Apple Producer allows all music producers to provide lossless source files for apple's music masters.

You know that at some point be it 2 years or 10 years from now, there will be a new format that is significantly higher quality at 128 kbps than AAC or provides same quality as AAC at 32 kbps and Apple will choose to move to it. They just turn a rack of Macs loose 24/7, and a few days later, they are done.

100 macs compressing at 20:1 speed could do 5 million 4-minute songs in 7 days. With a modest investment, the entire library could be converted in just days.

Jim

Umm...if Apple didn't do this right from the start...I'd be very disappointed. If it didn't keep a master lossless file somewhere, it's in deep shit since it'll have to go back knocking on every label's doors.

I don't think Apple is *that* stupid.