Led Zeppelin and the Future of Hi-Res Audio Downloads:

You heard it here first.

Have you noticed lately that the stream of titles appearing on HD Tracks has been declining?

It isn't just because they screwed up their business by creating the most backward, customer unfriendly website, which they did. It is almost impossible to find new releases, other than the 'featured' titles on their home page. The search function is absolutely inept.

No, despite HD Tracks committing hare-kiri by  web design incompetence, it is much more than that. Warners catalog isn't being added to, those great Atlantic Soul and Jazz titles. Blue Note, despite their anniversary year, has slowed to a trickle. And so on. I just don't find much to buy at HD Tracks anymore - and I was a big customer.

Here's why.

In two months or so - beginning of June - the first three Led Zeppelin remasters will be available. They are essentially available on iTunes in low-res form already.

For several years, Apple have been insisting that labels provide files for iTunes in 24 bit format - preferably 96k or 192k sampling rate. So they have undeniably the biggest catalog of hi-res audio in the world.

And the Led Zeppelin remasters in high resolution will be the kick off event - to coincide with Led Zep in hi-res, Apple will flip the switch and launch their hi-res store via iTunes - and apparently, it will be priced a buck above the typical current file prices.

That's right - Apple will launch hi-res iTunes in two months.

And at that point, you can say goodbye to HD Tracks, Acoustic Sounds Hi-Res store, and ProStudioMasters, and probably all the other hi-res audio online stores. Apple will kill them, straight out of the box.

I'm not sure I feel good about Apple entering hi-res - I hate monopolies, and I sure am not an Apple fan overall. The reason labels will instantly migrate to Apple, despite business practices that are...well...not exactly consumer friendly, is that it is virtually certain there will be watermarking involved. That SHOULD be a deal breaker - for music fans at least - but the reality is, labels will hungrily embrace it.

But it is what it is. Apple is going hi-res, and will dominate the market, squeezing out everyone else. In some ways, HD Tracks did themselves in by their inept new website - but really, they never stood a chance. Chad and Acoustic Sounds entered in with a big splash, claiming they were going to be different - but the fact is, they were not, offering a lot of the same stuff everyone else does at the same prices, and also offering the DSD files of their own label productions - many of which, in particular the Blue Note titles remastered by Hoffman, are unexceptional sounding. (Side note - in remastering those Blue Note titles for SACD, Hoffman demanded that the volume level be reduced by at least 2dB - in some cases up to 4dB. Digitally reducing gain is done at the expense of resolution - digital gain reduction shaves off resolution, and in the case of the Blue Notes, they sound pretty dull as a result - in fact, the CD layer sounds better.)