Online Official Soundtracks: To Buy or Not To Buy?
 

There's been a recent influx of purchasable iTunes only soundtrack releases and other digital media soundtracks (e.g. DirectSong) recently. Examples include Children of Mana, Mother3i, Chocobo's Magic Picture Book, Square Enix Music Bootlegs, and most recent Jeremy Soule works, among many others. There's plenty of online official soundtracks that have hard copies too, such as most Final Fantasy, SaGa, and Mana scores. It's pretty well documented who likes to purchase hard copies of soundtracks here, but what about commercial digital media releases? Worth it or does it lose all the quirks and advantages of having a hard copy?

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Personally, I've only bothered with DirectSong. While WMA files aren't exactly ideal, the service is fast and quite reliable with multiple installs being allowed for each purchase. I've got all but Jeremy Soule's most recent two soundtracks. I'd prefer hard copies, but these are a decent and cheap alternative.

I'm not much of an iTunes user in the first place and I found it impossible to download Square Enix's Children of Mana release legitimately. I've ended up relying on RyuFAN's welcome rips for such soundtracks. I'm not too knowledgeable about other digital media soundtracks, but, reading around, there seems to be a fair amount out there.

I have bought single tracks several times on iTunes (only Quebecers bands), when I know which ones are good and which ones aren't so it costs less for the single tracks I want. But I've never done that for video games music. The quality is somewhat great, could be better sometimes. Anyway I'm better off with hard copies. Especially for video games. Maybe it's the collection side (I have nice shelves just for my games/dvds/cds collections). A good show off when family or friends are coming over.

Never have, never will. Lossy, commonly DRM-encumbered files? Frell that dren. Give me a CD that I can rip to lossless, compress to MP3 and pop on an iPod, copy, rearrange, backup, and do with anything else I need to do.

Plus, liner notes, cover art, and bonus stickers FTW.

I agree with Celtic- plus, Apple shouldn't be encouraged with their iTunes uncompetitive stance- people should be able to use an iTunes downloaded file on any MP3 player, not just on their PC or on an iPod.


But yeah, it sounds like paying for a gamerip, except I'd be willing to pay for a decent gamerip in HQ MP3/etc or FLAC format, but not a crappy lossy DRM version of a soundtrack CD. What a shocker!


I also don't agree that it's 'cheap' in reality to download WMA's as opposed to buying the actual CD in hard copy, at least, not for me. Only way I'd do that would be to download WMA's, is if that's the only way Soundtrack X was presented online, and then eventually I'd want a non-shitty quality release, which I'd have to pay for. Sounds silly to pay twice or even pay once and then download the CD.

Just ignore the policy and eventually it'll die. But that's easy for me to say, I can't imagine many soundtracks I want coming out there.

- Spike

I bought downloadable music online only once, and it wasnt VGM. It was from a small record company reissuing old and rare folk records. I paid 10 bucks and could get the album in FLAC. Never thought of it as a bad deal.

The common prices I see asked for recent stuff released in lossy formats seems indeed ridiculous, though, and it'd have to be something I want badly ...

I'm not enough of an audiophile to be able to tell the difference between good-quality lossy and lossless. Frankly, I think the whole argument is kind of silly--if something is available as a download, then that's how it should be gotten. If, for financial reasons, a download is all that can be offered, it's better than no music. I never understood people who turn up their noses at digital releases when the music is probably never going to be pressed to disc anyway.

Not to mention that this forum is rife with people providing, ahem, similar access to lossy music. Deriding the practice while engaging in it seems, well, odd.