Nobody but audiophiles care about FLAC. Most people out there don't have the ears nor the hardware to tell the difference between 192K MP3 and anything higher, and anybody that claims they can tell the difference between 320K and FLAC is probably trying to sell you something at best.

So it's a format that takes tons of disk space for no perceptible benefit. Why would it be popular? It's a niche format for niche uses.

I use FLAC and I wouldn't call myself an audiophile. However, I am a bit of an archivist or collector. Storage is so cheap that I figure I might as well store the highest quality version of my media.

I'd agree that in general you can't tell the difference between a well encoded MP3 and FLAC, but there are songs in which it makes a difference! To test myself I've run a few simple ABX tests; I'd encourage to try it out! It's worth noting that this is only at home with a DAC/amplifier and some decent headphones, but if I'm out and about then I have no qualms about streaming.

I have a pretty nice stereo/production setup at home. I even did the work to get my desk positioned as best I could to avoid weird reflections (luckily the room isn't close to square).

My collection of music is all wav/aiff or 320kbps mp3. I'd love to say I can tell the difference, but I can't.

A significant benefit of owning a FLAC for me is so that I can convert it to any format I may want to for end consumption.

This is kinda like trying to tell someone that png is a waste of space, just use jpg, you can't tell the difference.

It's not just about being able to tell the difference. Remixing is another example of things that require losslessness. Archiving as well.

> Nobody but audiophiles care about FLAC

Perhaps. However my contention is that if am paying the same price for supposedly an 'identical' product, then make sure it's actually identical.

At least ebooks generally are a tad cheaper than paperbacks, even if not by much, but not MP3s? Why? Simply because they can get away with it, I suppose.

That's because nobody knows what FLAC is. Why does nobody knows what FLAC is ? Because 192kbps MP3 quality is acceptable enough to most. If people don't have a problem, they don't expect a fix.

I'm not saying you're technically or auditively wrong, I'm saying that's not how the market has ever worked.

There are places that provide the option, such as Bandcamp, 7digital, HDTracks etc. so it doesn't seem to be a completely deserted market.

What I don't understand about iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and many others is that they're likely getting the tracks lossless anyway, they're then taking than and downsampling it to their common MP3 encoder settings for all tracks. It seems to me it would be trivial to add a 'FORMAT:' option, (that defaults to MP3), but allows for FLAC for these who know what it is.

Am aware there are specialist lossless streaming services, but I just don't understand the block of making this an option everywhere, including the iTunes Store, which has a massive catalog and Spotify, where the curated playlists etc. are.

Tidal offers exactly this, see e.g. https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000397069-TID... and Tidal HIFI.

If there's sufficient market interest in this (Tidal HIFI is twice the cost of normal Tidal) then the enthusiasts will rally around the service.

It doesn't look like the market cares that much, and I couldn't really hear a significant difference between's Spotify 320k stream and Tidal's masters (using HD800S + Mojo Chord as DAC).

I know about Tidal, there's also Deezer HiFi and Qobuz. I like to store my music locally, but I'd sign up for one of these if they weren't twice the price.

This is my problem, why pay significantly more when the streaming services get the lossless version from the label? I get the extra storage requirements, but that can't be a significant factor for the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google.

As for selling music, Amazon, Apple and Google refuse to even sell you a lossless album, yet charge the same as you'd pay for a CD.