Lossless Music Archives

The Complete Guide to Lossless Music Archives

1. What is a Lossless Music Archive?

A lossless music archive is a collection of audio files preserved without any reduction in quality. Unlike lossy formats (MP3, AAC), lossless formats retain every bit of the original source (CD, vinyl rip, or studio master).

So, why should you care about lossless music archives? Here are just a few benefits: lossless music archives

• TITLE, ARTIST, ALBUM, DATE, GENRE, TRACKNUMBER, TOTALTRACKS, DISCNUMBER, ALBUMARTIST, COMMENT (source info).

Run regularly: flac --test *.flac to detect corruption. The Complete Guide to Lossless Music Archives 1

• The Internet Archive (archive.org): Holds thousands of lossless live concerts (The Grateful Dead, Phish) and 78rpm shellac transfers.
• Bandcamp: The only streaming store that lets you buy once and re-download in any format (FLAC, ALAC, MP3). Many "name your price" albums are effectively free lossless archives.