Myspace fucks our music up

[blinkrocker3]

Whenever I upload an mp3 to my myspace band page, the audio quality gets really screwed up. Is it possible that myspace "dumbs down" the quality of a song if its past a certain limit? If so does anyone know the ideal quality for audio to be uploaded to myspace?

[dangercityskyline]

Is it possible that myspace "dumbs down" the quality of a song if its past a certain limit?

Oh it's definitely possible, and they definitely do it. MySpace downsamples or 'dumbs down' any songs uploaded to what I think is 96kbps no matter what quality they are originally. I don't know of any way to get around this either. I think you just have to deal with it. I don't like it, but it's the way it is.

[Vulconizer]

There is a definite file compression in place at Myspace. I also believe I have read that it is 96kbps.

[blinkrocker3]

then how come if you go to major artists the songs sound great?

[richiebee]

Marketing. It entices major artists to use MySpace, and in return, MySpace can say major artists have MySpace pages.

For the rest of us, myspace just sucks. Luckily, owning a web site isn't really very expensive. If you have music that is worth promoting, get yourself a web site and put good quality samples up.

[blinkrocker3]

yep, one of these days

[scooterlow]

There's probably some tricks major studios use to make sure that even at a lower sample rate the song doesn't degrade as much. Something in the mastering or maybe they know exactly how Myspace coverts there files and has inside info on what the best file type and size is to upload. AAaaaa just a shot in the dark....

[dangercityskyline]

Or, MySpace just made a deal with the Big Four record labels to exclusively carry some content on their site, and in return (along with other stuff, most likely), they don't downsample the songs.
that to me is probably the most likely thing, but scooterlow could be right too.

[fortyseven]

Of course they downsample. Imagine the bandwidth use if everyone could upload at any bitrate they liked! I dont think that major artists get preferencial treatment; I think its just that their music is probably mixed and mastered better.

[marxstuff]

G'morning folks,
I'm going to throw this out there. If you're talking about the pure sonic quality of the music, It might just be the difference between music mastered in a pro environment by a pro mastering engineer vs. music that mastered with a plug in. It's a whole other science and it makes a world of difference. Well mastered music can be played on almost anything and it still sounds really good.