I use Grooveshark and the streaming functionality of Bandcamp, but I prefer to download music (from the source or...otherwise) where I can. I find myself balancing my passion for completionism and archivalism with my low bandwidth, but a high quality file will always be favoured over a low quality one -- I hate the idea of information being irreparably (for me) lost. My music collection varies as hard drives variously fail and are bought, either by themselves or in a computer (I have been meaning to read up on RAIDs and implement one, but have not yet), although probably much of that data can be recovered - but currently I have a library of 133 files, most from one catalog <http://8bitpeoples.com/discography?show=all>.
In the light of this thread, I decided to see what filetypes and bitrates I have. Attached is a textfile detailing that. -Arlo James Barnes *One month later*
7 'unknown' -- because they are MIDIs, or tracker module files like .nsf and .sid - although there is also one .wav there, but it was programmatically generated and so maybe is lacking headers? 34 @ 24 kbps -- mp3s, from a single large album of chiptunes. The creator claims that low bitrates better match the chiptune sound and ethic. 1 @ 127 kbps -- an mp3 from a single album of very experimental (and to be honest, very dissonant) chiptunes; each song in that EP has a weird bitrate, so I will list the rest here: 128, 133, 134, 135, 135 again, 138. Other albums from that artist are a more normal uniform 128 kbps. 159 @ 128 kbps -- including the aforementioned. 4 @ 160 kbps -- from three separate albums, but all chiptune, so maybe a particular tracker exports at this quality? 558 @ 192 kbps -- 192 is 2^6*3 and is by far the most common here. Several genres, many albums, I think all mp3. 1 @ 199 kbps -- an mp3 rendering of a .sid, I think. 5 @ 256 kbps -- from 3 chiptune albums by two artists. 1 @ 320 kbps -- a standalone 'liquid dubstep' homage to Beethoven. Also the only file I have [mp3] that has metadata reporting beats per minute (140) besides two chiptune albums by the same artist, the contents of which are all 100 bpm.
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