We are excited to announce that we are getting closer to launching Concert Vault downloads. The philosophy behind our design and development is straightforward – make the service easy to use, set fair prices and deliver great quality music.
At the outset, our concert download files will be encoded as unrestricted 256k mp3 files (twice the bitrate delivered by iTunes and most other major digital services). Our testing showed that this provides an excellent concert listening experience while still allowing for a reasonable download time and keeping it easy for users to play the concerts on their computers and mp3 players. There are a number of you out there that have asked for (some have actually demanded) lossless files. Please don’t worry – we hear you and we intend to offer lossless in the future. This is largely a timing and resource issue and lossless will be offered as soon as possible.
We will offer only the complete concerts for download, not individual tracks, as it is the best way to hear these shows. It also provides a measure of efficiency which will allow us to keep prices low. The abrupt stops you currently hear between songs will disappear on the downloaded version as those are a function of the streaming Flash player, not the files themselves. Pricing may vary a bit as we move forward, but initially we will offer all shows for $9.98.
At launch, there will be approximately 50 concerts available for purchase and download. This will include some headline acts, some hidden gems and a handful of fairly obscure artists. We are working diligently to add more concerts and provide you access to everything you might want. We will provide updates as soon as we add concerts to the download list.
There are a few other important updates to the Concert Vault that will go live concurrent with downloads:
| • | 10 new concerts each week – we will be doubling the number of new concerts from 5 to 10 that we post each week on Concert Vault; |
| • | Genre and era grouping - we have categorized the concerts by genre and by decade so you can quickly access your favorite music; |
| • | Home page redesign – The homepage for Concert Vault has been refreshed and redesigned to allow easier access to concerts directly from the home page. |
Thank you for all the feedback – it is tremendously useful to us as we try to build the best service possible. Please keep it coming.
Cheers
Wolfgang
