Actually I have seen releases on iTunes, where one is “Mastered for iTunes” and one is not. They have different barcodes, as well. Your assumption that all iTunes releases are Mastered for iTunes is just not correct. Many of the brand new releases on iTunes are not “Mastered for iTunes” and therefore destroys any argument that all iTunes releases are going that way.
I never said this. It is one or the other, given the same store.
Per the Apple guidelines and tech documents themselves, this is going to be the new standard, with more changes to it. The MFiT is a step one into the change to 24 bit downloads.
Apple Music is a streaming service. iTunes is a download service. They are not the same at all, agreed. When I say “iTunes”, I mean iTunes, the download service, and not Apple Music, the streaming service. I have not looked at Apple Music to comment on the differences that may or may not be there in comparison to iTunes. Regardless though, iTunes and Apple Music are two distinctly different things.
On a personal level, I have sort of given up on this. MB can do as they wish, just as I can do as I wish. All I can say is that on the thousands of iTunes releases and individual songs I have indexed, cataloged, etc … what I am saying holds true on each and every one of them. Yet, when I use MB for data on those releases, I encounter issues with data. Thus the reason I no longer edit, or at least not at all like I did before, here. I am picky on my metadata, and the data that is used here is just not up to par. To each their own, but I no longer want anything to do with this topic until guidelines are put in place that fix the inaccuracies that the current guidelines cause.
They use the same URL! That’s what I was talking about. Many go to that URL and don’t realize that it typically defaults to Apple Music, never click on the Also Available in iTunes, and therefore never see the Mastered for iTunes badge. The reason for the disambiguation is that many iTunes releases have been both “Mastered for iTunes” and not. Many that came out before 2012, which is when MFiT started, have been updated. They are different releases. To make it more confusing, some even use the same URL, but they are still separate releases. I misinterpreted your “one or the other” as saying they were all the same, either they are on iTunes therefore MFiT. But I now see, that was not what you intended.
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Ahh, ok. I see where the confusion was here. I agree iTunes is a total mess, I do not like Apple anyway, but I cannot discount their AAC encoder. It is the best there is unless there is someone making an encoder I am unaware of. Obviously speaking if compressed music. As a Linux user, I go through a fair deal of hassle to use said encoder, but it is well worth it.
I’m really agreeing with you now. After working with iTunes for over a couple of years, I have come to the conclusion that there really isn’t a difference between Mastered for iTunes and other releases. At least there really is no need to separate them from other releases if that’s the only difference. I’ll keep doing so, because I’m not sure about the consensus. However, let me explain this as others have. All Mastered for iTunes means is that the release has been mastered to meet requirements iTunes has. Why couldn’t a studio master a release to meet these requirements and then also send the same release to another outlet like Spotify, Deezer or whatever. There has been a series set up called “Mastered for iTunes” that can be attached to all releases that have the blue badge. I think that if the labels, artwork, tracklist, & barcode are the same, they should really be the same release. The disambiguation really isn’t necessary. I think we should merge all the releases that have the same barcodes, labels, etc. and just link to the series to reflect the “Mastered for iTunes” badge. The fact is with the knowledge of barcodes of iTunes, Spotify & Deezer that alone can show the difference between the releases.
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I only want to comment on one portion of your statement. You are 100% correct in that a company/artist/mastering engineer/etc is not going to make a master and use for most all. No one is going to make a master meeting MFiT specs and then create a lesser quality master for others. The MFiT initiative is meant to raise the bar of digital audio. In most cases, what it means is that the mastering engineer enforces standards that should have been enforced anyway, and does not bring down to 16 bit recordings that are of a higher bit rate to start with.
I would hope that any reputable studio is not recording anything at 16 bit, so what it really means is asking the mastering engineer to not degrade the audio like you do for CD standards and keep the higher definition… but also enforce standards to prevent digital clipping… which should have been done anyway. We as curators of musical history need to understand what is really going on. We owe it to ourselves and future generations of people to drop egos and opinions and address facts as they are. My opinions are against iTunes, but the facts make me hold them back.
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In practice, the barcode is usually not the same between the 16-bit AAC “Mastered for iTunes” release and other 16-bit releases. And because of this, it doesn’t matter how the music was mastered because “Mastered for iTunes” then serves its purpose as a real digital media release disambiguation.
One special case is that Warner Bros. Records has a practice of using the same barcode for the 16-bit AAC “Mastered for iTunes” release and the 24-bit lossless release, but you’ll have to fight pretty hard to convince everyone that a 16-bit release and a 24-bit release aren’t materially different.
If all are convinced that 16-bit and 24-bit are different releases, then the same can be said for MP3 and M4A, especially since there is more of an audible difference between the lossy formats than there is between the lossless formats.
Also, regarding barcodes, I will still say that barcodes are not a key factor on digital releases. Mainly because the digital release rarely ever contains a barcode in its metadata, and is also not easily available. Using iTunes as an example, iTunes does not openly disclose any barcodes.
I believe there is also a bit of a typo or misstatement here. MFiT releases are derived from a 24 bit audio source, not 16 bit. Additionally, once the AAC/M4A file is created, it is not a 16 bit audio file, it is a compressed audio file at a 256 kbps bitrate.
For reference:
“A 16-bit, 44.1kHz song requires a bitrate of 1.35 megabit/second of data, and a single minute of stereo audio takes up about 10 megabytes of space.”
I was only referring to 16-bit releases since that’s all iTunes offers. A 16-bit release on Spotify, Deezer & Bandcamp are the same release if they have the same barcode, If a “Mastered for iTunes” release has the same barcode as those, it’s likely the same exact release that has just met iTunes’ standards. I have seen a few “Mastered for iTunes” and HDtrack releases have the same barcode, but it’s uncommon. I agree in that instance they are different releases because the consensus is that different bit rate makes different releases.
Barcodes are easily identifiable on most iTunes releases. Every now and then there is one that’s difficult, but most have them in the “.jpg” cover art filename. They are easy on Deezer, Spotify, Bandcamp & HDtracks. So, they are definitely a factor. When iTunes doesn’t have it in the .jpg filename, they are usually the same as the Spotify barcode or can be found a lot of times at ISRC. Yeah, it takes a little time sometimes, but they are there. I really wish Apple would include barcodes in their API files, but they don’t, but if you find it in the filename or from another site, it’s easy to check against their API. Amazon & Google Play however, are a different matter. Never been able to find out what their barcodes are. And true maybe “Mastered for iTunes” are mastered at 24-bit, but they are definitely still sold as 16-bit, even if they are compressed.
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What I mean by availability of a barcode is a regular user is not able to easily find them. It is not listed on the site and not included in the files. Whereas a CD has a barcode printed right on, easy to locate. So if I open up my iTunes release, where is the barcode? It is not there. iTunes does in fact hide the barcode from the end user. It is considered internal use only.
AAC M4A files sold at iTunes are not 16 bit audio, nor are they 24 bit audio. They are 256 kbps compressed audio. Mastered for iTunes files are derived from a 24 bit source while iTunes Plus files are derived from a 16 bit source. An M4A COULD be made to contain 16 bit audio, but those sold at iTunes (AAC encoded) are NOT 16 bit audio.
EDIT: A 16 bit audio file uses 16 bits per channel. From there, we multiple 44100 by 32 (16x2) and we get 1411200, which is 1411 kbps. AAC M4A files from iTunes are at 256 kbps, far less than what 16 bit audio is.
EDIT2: I wanted to add to the prior edit. You will not expect to see all 16 bit audio at 1411 kbps. What that means is that 16 bit audio needs to have that available for use, not having to use. So for the AAC encoded M4A, the 1411 is more comparable to ~320. The more non technical general distinction is that 16 bit audio is lossless, AAC/M4A is compressed / lossy.
You can do a lookup of the ASIN to get the associated barcode. But just like iTunes, the barcode is hidden from the user and considered internal use only, but for different reasons. The lookup works a good amount of the time, but there will be cases where there is no barcode listed.
You can lookup ASIN here: asinlab.com
You can use ASIN B000TJ6CM2 to test it out. Here is a link to that product:
Amazon.com
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Thanks for the info. I didn’t know about that.
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It can be helpful sometimes. I use it mostly for CDs so I cannot speak for how well it works for digital releases. I am not aware of any reference to barcode for Google Play Music. Given the structure at Google for the music services, I wonder if a barcode will even apply. I would be curious if anyone looks into that to see the results.