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Why buy downloads from us?
Two reasons:
Can I get individual songs, or only full albums? At this store you can only buy the full album, which includes the artwork from the CD. However you can listen to all the music first for free on each album page, and if you browse this site you will find a few songs available as free downloads from each artist.
At Get Bent Records we want to provide your ears with the best possible listening experience for the best value. Its not your fault that MP3 has become the standard digital format, so why should you pay for an inferior product? We give you the option by providing you with the better quality file - if you still prefer MP3, simply convert it.
MP3 is a "lossy" audio format, which means that the quality of the sound is sacrificed to make the file smaller. The advantage is that you can store a lot more music in a smaller space. The disadvantage is that when the file is compressed, some frequencies are lost. It boils down to quantity over quality.
Lossless audio is a song that is compressed without any loss in quality. The files remains larger than MP3's, however you are hearing all the nuances and details of the super-rich audio sound. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec (it is also open-source). It works similar to Zip, except with FLAC you get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio. To learn more about FLAC and see a list of supported devices, go to http://flac.sourceforge.net/
How do I listen to FLAC files? You can listen to FLAC files in one of two ways: use a music player that supports FLAC audio, such as Winamp with the FLAC pluggin (get plugin here) . Or you can convert the file into a format you prefer using a music converter, we suggest dBpowermp, or FLAC frontend.
We use a program called FLAC Frontend (click here for link)
Who else is using / supporting FLAC? For a list of hardware supporting FLAC click here
Apple lossless is similar to FLAC in that It compresses the original audio file without any loss in sound quality. It was created by Apple for direct use with iTunes software, and the i-pod. If you try to put a WAV file on your i-pod you will crash it. But you can convert the file to Apple lossless and then put that on your i-pod for the high quality sound experience.
If you are using iTunes and would like to convert the file format, simply go to your Edit tab, then go to Preferences. When this is open, click the Advanced tab, and then the Importing tab. Now look for the drop-down menu titled Import Using: these are the file format options for importing and converting music files. Select your format, and then right click on the song(s) you wish to convert in your library. There will be an option to Convert selection to... whichever format you've selected. Converting a file will create a second file in the new format, so you will still have your original file intact. Remember that you can only convert down in quality, for example from WAV or lossless audio to MP3, not vice versa.
If you still prefer to listen to the music in MP3 format, you can simply convert the files using a music converter such as dBpowermp. Some music players (like iTunes) have converters built right into them. Are there any MP3's available on this site? Yes. If you visit the album pages on this website, each band has a select number of free MP3's that you can download.
More links on lossless and lossy audio formats More info on lossless and lossy audio formats for music Performance comparison of lossless audio compressors
Did we answer all of your questions? If not, please feel free to contact us at support@getbentrecords.com and we'll be more than happy to help you out as soon as we can. |