Lossless Music Storefronts?

[xolotl]

When I buy digitally, I tend to want lossless. Probably surprising nobody, Bandcamp's been my usual mainstay for this since they have great prices, consumer+band-friendly policies, and are just generally a pretty great storefront. Sometimes an album's not on Bandcamp, though, and I admit I'm also a bit worried about their long-term future after having been passed around recently (first being acquired by Epic Games, of all fucking places, and then dumped over to some song-licensing company). So I'm sometimes on the lookout for alternative storefronts, and being continually disappointed by how terrible most of them are. I assume that there's not some incredible place out there that I'm missing, but what I've found over the years:

(in no actual order)

1) prostudiomasters.com -- The one time I bought something here, they literally required you to use an app to download from the site. They have never heard of a zipfile, apparently. I'm on Linux, so running their Windows/Mac app is at best annoyingly complex, and at worst impossible. I had emailed their customer support and they were nice enough to provide an alternate direct download for the album I bought, but I haven't been back there since. Has that changed at all?

2) hdtracks.com -- Does *not* require an app to download, but when last I used them, their web downloader queues up each individual track separately. (Again, I guess zipfiles don't exist?) That process is, at least, automated via Javascript or whatever, but you're still stuck going through however many file-download dialogs to get things saved properly (I suppose if I had my browser set to just automatically download to a specific folder it'd be more streamlined, but to hell with that.)

3) Qobuz -- Again, no actual app required, but like hdtracks.com they don't know what a zipfile is, and require individual track downloads. Unlike hdtracks.com, that process isn't even automated, so you've gotta manually click through on each one.

4) 7digital -- Have not yet actually tried these folks. (Edit: Apparently they do download via zip, though, which would be nice! I guess the selection is not great, nowadays, though.)

Is there anywhere else out there for "general-purpose" downloads? I've had good luck with label-specific sites -- Warp's "bleep" storefront, for instance, is great -- but for just a general digital lossless music download site, all the options except Bandcamp just seem awful. I also kind of hate to bring money considerations into it, but I cannot shake the impression that prices on prostudiomasters/hdtracks/qobuz, at least, are way too high. For most albums on there I could practically buy the vinyl release for what they're charging, and could nearly always get the CD version for the price (assuming a CD release exists, anyway). I do understand that "enterprise-grade" storage is a lot more expensive than consumer-grade stuff, but disk space is not *that* expensive, and Bandcamp can somehow manage to keep prices reasonable. Even when I chip in extra money on Bandcamp, I'm still paying less than what these other places are asking for.

Anyway, I expect this thread will be more of a gripe than anything else, but if anyone does have some magical storefront I've never heard of (or if the ones up there have improved their download functionality since I'd last tried them), I'd love to hear about it.

(Edit: I suppose I should also clarify that personally, I only really care about CD-quality audio. 16bit @ 44.1kHz is good enough for me. I actually typically don't even want a 24/96 download... 96kHz in particular seems pretty ridiculous to me for my own hardware, at least.)

[BRoswell]

3) Qobuz -- Again, no actual app required, but like hdtracks.com they don't know what a zipfile is, and require individual track downloads. Unlike hdtracks.com, that process isn't even automated, so you've gotta manually click through on each one.

You used to be able to batch download directly from the site, but they decided at some point to make it so you could only do that if you use their downloader program. If I'm only downloading a couple tracks, I will just do it one at a time, but if it's a full album, I will use that. Not sure why they made the change, but yeah, it used to not be like that.

As far as sites go, I use Qobuz, Bleep, and Bandcamp. I used to use 7digital, but their selection is kind of terrible. I've used HDtracks in the past for full albums, but only if it's cheaper or easier than another site (which it rarely is).

[talkingnothing]

I still use 7digital sometimes. they deliver via zip, prices are better than some of the others. but as has been mentioned, they must have lost a contract with one of the couple remaining major labels, as a lot of stuff doesn't show up there anymore. I usually use them or Bandcamp. i have only sparingly used Qobuz and HDtracks, mostly because of the their pricing. Qobuz really irks me by showing the price that subscribers get and then when you go to choose the option or bitrate, they show the actual price at 60% higher. i suppose if i was into lossless streaming i could subscribe with them, but for me lossy spotify is fine for casual streaming and when i want something for my collection i either buy a disc and rip or buy cd quality digital at one of these places. i know i am a bit hypocritical for thinking an album should be in the $10-12 range when that's how much i was paying 25 years ago for cds. of course still cant understand why downloads should cost the same as a cd shipped to you.

[xolotl]

I still use 7digital sometimes. they deliver via zip

Ah, good to know, thanks! Forcing the use of an app to get "convenient" downloads probably bothers me more than it should, but it just infuriates me that the other sites haven't figured out how to be sensible. Like, I'm already using a web browser to purchase music from you. I am downloading data from you constantly. Why can't I just use that same browser to conveniently download an album? Why do I have to run some probably-shitty app that was probably written by someone without the first clue about software security, etc? Anyway, enough ranting from me on that topic...

i know i am a bit hypocritical for thinking an album should be in the $10-12 range when that's how much i was paying 25 years ago for cds. of course still cant understand why downloads should cost the same as a cd shipped to you.

Heh, yeah, I often wonder about that too, honestly. Everything else in the world seems to be keeping up with inflation well enough (and then some), but albums are mostly still quite cheap, really. Perhaps the prices @ prostudiomasters/hdtracks/qobuz actually reflect what album prices really should be and I've just gotten infested with Sale Culture or whatever. I occasionally buy IAMX releases direct from their website and their prices are more inline with psm/hdt/q. Maybe Bandcamp's typical pricing has been devaluing the music all along? I do tend to throw an extra couple bucks on top of most purchases there, at least...