MusicGiants Network

MusicGiants Network

High Fidelity Music Download Service

Report from BetaNews:
New Hi-Fi Music Store Shows Promise
By Ed Oswald, BetaNews
October 14, 2005, 5:34 PM
REVIEW Ask many an audiophile what their number one complaint about digital music is, and you'd likely get the same answer from just about everyone: quality.

The door has been left wide open for a high-fidelity music download service, and with the further ubiquity of broadband and larger capacity digital music players, file size is no longer an issue.

Enter MusicGiants. The Nevada-based company quietly launched its self-titled service September 29, but if my first look is any indication, the service may be about to make a big splash in the world of digital music. For a $50 annual fee, users are given access to a catalog of music from EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music.

While the current music selection obviously pales in comparison to that of iTunes or Napster, the company says that it is in the process of securing deals with the other major labels to expand the catalog.

MusicGiants users can download each track for $1.29, which initially would be "free" through a $50 song credit given for joining the service. However, unlike competing services that encode their songs at 128 kbps, all tracks from MusicGiants are in Microsoft's Windows Media Lossless format, which encodes songs between 470 and 1100 kbps.

This results in a non-degraded version of the original digital recording, meaning there is little -- if any -- difference in sound, Microsoft claims.

So how did the service do after a week of rigorous testing from BetaNews?

THE MUSIC

Let's be up front. MusicGiants cannot take the credit for the quality of the music downloads as it employs Microsoft's Windows Media technology. However, the decision to use Lossless encoding is what makes the whole service worthwhile.

To test the format out completely, I downloaded a range of different musical styles to see how accurately it reproduces the sound -- from Rock, Funk, Dance, Hip-Hop and Pop among others -- and was I impressed.

To be honest, I own an iPod so obviously I don't deal with the Windows Media format very often.

However, I will cede to Microsoft that it has the format down pat. Compared with Apple's iTunes, music on WM Lossless just seems to be fuller with more depth. Bass is more pronounced, vocals sound more natural. And to the audiophile, it's the little things like that which count.

The sound quality alone makes the extra 30 cents that MusicGiants charges more than worth it. If I really like an artist or song, I'd much rather pay extra money to have a better quality version. For iPod owners, at least for the moment, that's impossible.

There is also another added benefit to lossless tracks that is not immediately apparent. Many of us like to make our own CDs. Those who have done so with the tracks bought through current services -- or downloaded from file sharing sites -- may find that the end result is a rather poor sounding CD.

However, when a Lossless track is reconverted to be burned onto a disc, the audio quality is identical to the original song, leaving you with a professional sounding CD.

So even if you're not an audiophile, you could find a service like MusicGiants useful.

THE CLIENT

I am going to preface this portion of the review by saying we should all remember that this is version 1.0 of the MusicGiants software, so we cannot expect the world.

That said, while the client shows promise, there is a quite a bit of work that still needs to be done. However, most of the problems are not serious enough to deter usage - they're just minor inconveniences.

Starting out with the front page, the client looks fairly straightforward: navigational buttons to the left, an informational pane in the middle and tabs for your 'Now Playing,' 'Download', and 'Make CD' functions of the software on the right.

The two buttons nearest to the top allow you to browse the MusicGiants catalog by genre and by artist (Note: MusicGiants will automatically connect to your Windows Media Library and will add your own collection into this list. You can also opt to have it only show your collection as well). For those planning to use the service, I'd suggest using 'Browse By Artist.' It appears as if MusicGiants hasn't completely categorized the entire catalog yet, and doing so will give you a much broader selection.

One thing I did not like was no way to view just your library ungrouped. This makes it more difficult in my opinion to build a playlist. You have to go into an artist, then their album, drag the song over, go back out, and repeat. That's a bit time consuming.

Playing songs is a pretty straightforward process. What I found nice was MusicGiants' little "fidelity meter" on the lower left hand corner. This gives you a real-time idea of what bitrate the song was encoded in. According to this scale, 0 to 160 kbps is considered low fidelity, 160-470 kbps mid-fidelity, and 470-1100 kbps high fidelity - the bitrate of Windows Media Lossless tracks.

The software will also let you rip a CD into your library, but I ran into problems here when trying to only copy over certain songs. While it created the folders to place the files in my music folder, MusicGiants did not actually rip the tracks for some reason. I chalked it up to a bug in the coding.

Also available are options to play a CD, which worked fine, and to burn a CD. The CD burning application is nice, as it gives you a graphical representation of the capacity of the CD as you drag tracks into the 'make CD' playlist. The burn application seems fast; of course the speed you burn will be dependent upon your CD-R drive.

If MusicGiants fixes the problems I've listed above, and fixes some of the user interface quirks to make the client more user friendly, the service could very well become one of the best Windows Media music stores out there.

So, does MusicGiants sing a joyful tune, or fall on deaf ears?

OUR TAKE

The Good: Did I say sound quality? MusicGiants tracks are fully worth the $1.29 you pay for them. Of course, if you have an iPod you won't be able to take them mobile unless you burn them to CD and then re-rip. But even then you'll still get better sound quality than anything from iTunes if you choose to rip them back as Apple Lossless tracks.

The Bad: The client needs work. The UI is not very user friendly, and there are a few nasty little bugs that make using MusicGiants frustrating at times. Also, no option to view your entire library at once is slightly annoying. The $50 annual fee is also strange considering you don't pay it the first year, plus the tracks are already 30 cents more than most competing services.

The Bottom Line: While some may scoff at the $50 annual fee for MusicGiants membership, if you do a lot of legal downloading this is the service for you. Also, if you’re an audiophile, and have been holding off on that MP3 player, get a higher-capacity player and sign up for this service. There are issues with the client, but I'm sure as time goes on these will be fixed. Until another service comes out with something similar MusicGiants is in a class all by itself.