> Hi, > > On Thursday 09 October 2003 15:30, Joachim Backhaus wrote: > > isn't this a linux list? ;-) > > Yes, and the question is a highly pertinent one if you think > about it for a > moment. I manage a music website - using Linux entirely nowadays > - I'd dearly > love to scrap all the .mp3 files in favour of .oggs but it occurs > to me that > this would mean /most/ of my readers won't listen to the music - > it's fairly > unlikely that I'm going to be able to persuade the majority of them to > download /anything/ regardless of how easy any of us think it is to do. > > -my2p- > > tim hall > > Tim, I completely agree. I've been a Windows user for what, 15 years now?. I have 5 PCs at home. I've dealt with enough buggy Windows audio software over the years, so I download and install almost nothing unless I have some form of assurance from people I trust that it's good stuff that won't mess my system up. Even with that experience today is the first time I've listened to an .ogg on any Windows PC. Granted, I'm a careful guy, but I think from your perspective it's way more difficult. I've known for a long time what an .ogg is, but when you come across one Windows Media Player doesn't tell the casual user anything about making it work. It just says it won't play it. You can attempt to put instructions on-line, but careful people like me probably won't use them unless there's something important about what we want to listen to. Worse is that something goes wrong and people blame you. That's really bad for business I'm sure. And on the other hand, Linux based musicians who *want* their music to be heard are cutting their nose off not making it extremely available through mp3s. Frankly, independent of the perceived advantages of .ogg over mp3 (open source, sounds better, no licensing issues or royalty payments) it's just good business to make your product usable by more people. That leads to good stuff. Forcing people to go to .ogg seems like it's backwards to the open source movement. Mark
