iTunes is becoming less and less important as downloads wane in desirability, but that doesn't mean you can ignore it completely. There are those that still want to purchase their songs, especially at higher sample and bit rates, so having the best sounding AAC files is still worth striving for.
"There are a number of tips to follow in order to get the best sound quality from an iTunes encode. As it turns out, the considerations are about the same as with MP3 encoding:
1. Turn it down a bit. A song that's flat-lined at -0.1 dBFS isn't going to encode as well as a song with some headroom. This is because the iTunes AAC encoder sometimes outputs a tad hotter than the source, so there's some inter-sample overloads that happen at that level that aren't detected on a typical peak meter, since all DACs respond differently to it. As a result, a level that doesn’t trigger an over on your DAW’s DAC may actually be an over on another playback unit.
If you back it down to -0.5 or even -1 dB, the encode will sound a lot better and your listener probably won't be able to tell much of a difference in level anyway.
2. Don't squash the master too hard. Masters with some dynamic range encode better. Masters that are squeezed to within an inch of their life don't; it’s as simple as that. Listeners like it better too.
3. Although the new AAC encoder has a fantastic frequency response, sometimes rolling off a little of the extreme top end (16kHz and above) can help the encode as well.
Any type of data compression requires the same common sense considerations. If you back off on the level, the mix buss compression and the high frequencies, you’ll be surprised just how good your AAC encode can sound.
Remember that iTunes still does the AAC encoding. You're just providing a file that's been prepped to sound better after the encode.
Here are some interesting facts about digital music that have recently come available through various online research organizations.
The Apple's iTunes Store has increased its market share in the digital music arena, capturing 69% of the digital music market during the first half of 2009, according to the NPD Group. The rest of the top five: Best Buy - 16%, Wal-Mart - 14%, and Target and Amazon MP3, both at 10%.
The iTunes Store continues to dominate music retail, grabbing a 25% share of the overall market while selling 2 billion (with a "b") tracks during the first half of the year, according to an NPD report. Wal-Mart leads all retailers in physical CD sales with a 20 percent share of the physical music market, followed by Best Buy at 16 percent and Target and Amazon tied at 10 percent each.
CDs still comprised of 65% of all music sold in the first half of the year compared to paid digital downloads, which comprised 35% of music sales. The digital segment is growing fairly rapidly though, since the split was 80%/20% in 2007.
And a bonus digital fact:
The percentage of US internet users who have created a social network profile jumped from 43% in 2008 to 59% in 2009, according to Universal McCann's annual Social Media Tracker report cited by eMarketer. The U.S. easily led all nations in social networking activity, but 7 other countries polled had higher percentages of internet users with a social network profile. Russia came in first at 85.3% after registering just a 23.1% penetration rate in 2006.
What these facts tell us is that internet use and digital music consumption is on the rise and won't level off for a while. That being said, CDs are still a huge business and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Are we seeing a second save of the music business by Michael Jackson? It's no secret that the music business was in a terrible state in 1982 when Michael Jackson's producer Quincy Jones predicted "We're here to bring people back into the record stores," on the first day of recording of MJ's landmark "Thriller."
Surprisingly, his prediction was true. MJ went on to sell nearly 50 million copies of Thriller domestically and reportedly almost 175 million internationally, as the music business went on a streak of unprecedented growth and wealth that lasted 20 more years.
So here we are again 27 years down the road and the music business is in far worse shape than it's ever been, but MJ's untimely death just might bring it out of the doldrums again. Just hours after his death on Thursday, various Michael Jackson albums began climbing up Apple's iTunes Music Store's "Top Albums" list, where his historic "Thriller" now sits at #1.
MJ now holds an unprecedented 9 out of the top 10 chart positions, 14 of the top 20, and 16 of the top 40, which must be some sort of record.
Here's the chart as it stands on Friday afternoon:
• #1: "Thriller" • #2: "The Essential Michael Jackson" • #3: "Number Ones" • #4: "Off The Wall" • #5: "Thriller (25th Anniversary, Zombie Cover)" • #6: "Bad" • #7: "Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection" • #8: "Dangerous" • #9: "Michael Jackson Greatest Hits: HIStory, Vol. 1" • #14: "Off the Wall (Special Edition)" • #15: "Jackson 5: The Ultimate Collection" • #18: "History: Past, Present and Future, Book 1" • #19: "Thriller (25th Anniversary) [Deluxe Edition]" • #20: "Thriller (25th Anniversary)" • #21: "Invincible" • #39: "Anthology: The Best of Michael Jackson" • #49: "Anthology: Jackson 5" • #44: "Michael Jackson: Gold" • #46: "20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection" The Best of The Jackson 5" • #82: "Blood on the Dance Floor / History in the Mix" • #87: "Greatest Hits - Jackson 5"
The iTunes singles charts has MJ with 38 out of the top 100 and that doesn't even include Jackson 5 songs.
At Amazon, physical copies of Michael's entire catalog sold out minutes after his passing was announced. He currently has 9 of the top 15 albums and 10 of the top 15 singles.
It should be interesting to see just what this unprecedented sales upturn (in the digital age at least) actually brings in total, but so far it looks like his demise has caused consumers to purchase again. Too bad it's under such sad circumstances.
Below is one of the more bizarre renditions of MJ's truly groundbreaking Thriller video. It's done by inmates from a Philippine prison.
A recent study by an unnamed music service (speculation is it's the iTunes store) states that of their 12 million songs, 9 million didn't sell a single copy last year. This flies against the wind of The Long Tail theory, which states that consumers will by more catalog than hits if it were available, the catalog being "the long tail." Economists who never bought the theory to begin with are now dancing on it's grave.
But wait. There's more to it than just having the catalog available for purchase. After having studied the Long Tail theory, I've come to the conclusion that this study doesn't take into account 2 of its 3 main points. They are:
in order for people to purchase items in the Long Tail, the items must be easy to find and easily available.
the items in the Long Tail must be priced attractively, something that iTunes or any other digital service hasn't done until now.
As a result, I think that before the naysayers dismiss this theory, they must give all facets of it a chance work. With variable pricing now coming to most digital stores, we can see shortly how price affects sales. It's that "easy to find" part that's probably going to prove problematic.
