That sounds like you need to try bandcamp, because they are missing the most popular stuff ;)

[Edit]: And they offer all downloads I've encountered so far in several lossy and lossless formats, including FLAC and WAV

*: Mostly albums, some few are EPs or single tracks

Is it? As far as I know, lossless is only offered for the Apple Music streaming service, but not for downloads from the iTunes store, which remain as 256K AAC files.

They both use the same app for playback, so this is a tad confusing.

Whereas the iTunes store downloads are a one time-purchase and have no DRM, so they're yours to keep.

[1] https://wiki.videolan.org/index.php?title=Advanced_Audio_Cod...

Programmes like iTunes appear to be unlawful as they enable and encourage this infringement.

UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose.

This is true of copyright law everywhere.

A decent proxy to know that this is true is that at those bitrates, a FLAC file is often smaller than the AAC one. Yes, this makes you wonder why you'd want to use an lossy format instead of the lossless one if you have the choice ... but the point is that you'll probably have just as good an experience with a high-bitrate lossy-encoded file.

That's irrelevant, FLAC is an archival format. If you rip a CD, it makes perfect sense to rip it to flac in order to have no data loss whatsoever, and be able to fork it off to whatever lossy format is de rigueur for your new device. If you rip to a lossy format, then each copies will accumulate approximations from the different codec's perceptual models, especially if you keep deleting the previous copy and only keep the new one.

I don't put FLAC files on my phone, it takes way too much space, and the phone doesn't support it anyway. The phone gets AAC conversions of the "master" FLAC files.

Besides, the quality of 256 VBR won't be the same as 256 CBR, but with FLAC, there's only different compression sizes.

Server storage is relatively cheap, mobile storage is a different kettle of fish, and even with a lot of storage, if you have a large music collection it's much easier to blow way past with FLAC as it's at least an order of magnitude larger than even high-quality lossy tracks. I can't put my entire collection on my phone even after having converted it to a lossy format, putting the lossless masters is plain not an option.

And since conversion is easy to do, and to automate, really the only reason to put lossless tracks on a device other than the storage server where they live is sheer laziness.

It's not.

Adjacent question: what’s the legally correct way to license music for public use (e.g. DJ set)

Licensing probably depends on your country. In Germany, you need to register with GEMA and pay a fee depending on the size of your audience.

Yep. In the US, it’s the venue that is responsible for the license. Technically, even playing a radio station in a public space requires that license, which is why most stores that have background music pay for Muzak or some similar service which bundles all the licensing costs along with the music stream itself. The license covers not just pre-recorded music but live music. I remember reading an account of a cover band which switched to playing originals because their venue didn’t have the licensing for them to play covers.

Plus liner notes are often omitted online, and occasionally that, too, is a little bit of a shame, even if the main thing is of course the music itself.

I am also not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that providing files you ripped to someone else ISN'T legal, even if they"ve paid for the album:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.....

Thanks for sharing that.

CDs are pure audio data with error correction.

Every modern copy or backup program ignores it, and it looks like none ever used it.

In forums where people look for such things out of curiosity people mention they existed, but I've not yet found someone that owns one to play with.

And zero of them stopped the analog hole on those old devices.

Now, as to the actual bit(s). There were two bits, one said copyrighted work, one said is this a copy. Almost all CDs shipped with the copyright bit set and the "is a copy" bit set to 0. This meant you can make one copy of the CD (by law). The copy should have the "is a copy" bit set, meaning no more copies of the copied disc.

This means you can actually copy the original CD as many times as you want, since it always looked like an original, hence copyable.

Remember Sony hardware sold an order of magnitude more in value than Sony music :)

Again, a non-issue. To recap:

1. Very few CDs even bothered to set the bits. 2. None (?) set both bits, meaning you can copy any original CD, even with bit respecting hardware. 3. The bit(s) in no way changed the audio. 4. No copy software on PC I have ever heard of even looked at the bit. 5. Very few pieces of hardware respected the bit.

Did I miss anything?

DVDs are more complicated as tools to remove DRM are illegal under the DMCA.

There are 100 different jurisdictions and while the law is different the practical situation is the same. Who is exactly going to police you copying your own cds in your own home? How is bob from bob's records to discover you have copied it? One should have to convince congress to require Operating systems to rat you out to bob then convince users to use such systems.

Doesn't quite make sense, as copyright is tort, but there are police departments devoted to court enforcement. I'd be wary.

Not saying it will happen, but seems easy to catch a lot of people with the draconian powers and laws of UK.

Then they demand that isps all over the country give names and addresses of people all over the UK that broke no law and did no wrong in hopes of conducting a fishing expedition and don't get laughed out of court.

Now they know who pays the bill for each home network but have no idea who actually downloaded the perfectly legal metadata and no way whatsoever to correlate the data of unknown users of the data with potentially unnamed buyers who legally purchased mp3s from multiple channels like Apple but you think a judge is going to let you paw through every computer in someone's home because you think they probably ripped a cd instead of downloading it on itunes 6 years ago on a different computer at a different address.

Does this sound real?

"Wronged" implies that they were harmed in some way. A better term would be "offended". They discovered, indirectly, that someone else was doing something they don't approve of—which otherwise doesn't affect them at all—and they want it stopped by any means necessary, even though this will just make the other person worse off without materially improving their own situation.

I don't know what the status is in the US, but copies for personal use are legal in the Netherlands. In fact, you actually pay a "private copying levy" for most devices capable of storing media (blank CDs, hard drives, phones, etc.)

Looks like there's something similar in a number of other European countries, but I don't know the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

The distinction is, that while it's NOT illegal to copy a CD to another format, it IS illegal to make a copy of something that has someone else's copyright on it, be it music, spoken word, written documents, videos or photos etc.

That can't be true.

It would mean doing backups are effectively illegal (can only backup your own files, not programs or the OS or any other files not created by oneself)

Explained in the last paragraph of this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_Kingdom