Modern Music Releases on...Floppy Disks?!
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- The music industry has embraced the popularity of retro audio media...but a few independent artists have branched out to release their tracks on a format I wouldn't have expected.
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I would like to see an album on those punch cards. One song on 500 cards. An entire album in a suitcase.
At that card rate, you could probably make a music video too and print the a video frame on each card so that they could be animated as a flipbook.
midi format reminds me of punched cards/tape. I reckon you could put midi on punched cards.
Wait… Isn’t that still a thing in the Netherlands? Just with a book instead of 500 cards. And the organ is not an electronic computer, but rather a mechanical one using air and REAL instruments! They’re just very big and expensive, but I heard one when I came home from school!
No. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
How about a album on “paper tape”? Paper tape was capable of holding a lot more data per then a single standard size punch card while still employing similarly cheap hole punch technology for recording the data. Of course, finding a working paper tape reader that would work with any sort of currently easily obtainable retro computer (or modern PC) would be difficult, especially since it would have to have decent enough sound playback specs (for example, IBM “PC speaker” sound wouldn’t cut it.).
While it's not practical, fitting/compressing multiple songs onto a floppy disk is pretty neat!
Its just non sence to put song in floppy ,but its kinda a fancy that people are getting into hardware form of music,at least something good happening in 2021
i remember finding some floppy disc and there was a the album by foo fighters the color and the shape on 3 discs songs where ripped from a cd at 8kbps vbr aac for such a low bit rate i was shocked how good they sounded
Look up LS240, it could format a floppy to contain 30M.
The audio quality reminds me of the RealAudio streaming radio stations of years ago. Pretty impressive they could get that kind of compression and still make it listenable.
Those streams were compressed to some degree usually MP3, I remember seeing a lot of 32kbps and some 16kbps so yeah. Plus if you wanted to listen to them over dial-up...... That usually lead to either a low-quality stream or 2 streams Hi/Low from the same site.
Nostalgia for a simpler time in a better age 💕
Yes, those were so bad! But it was cool when all you had was a modem.
Those files are technically MPEG-2, not MPEG-1 standard, and the ultra-low sampling rates like 8khz and 11khz are only supported in Fraunhofer's rarely used proprietary extensions of the spec (sometimes informally called MPEG-2.5) that technically aren't part of the MPEG standards at all so some decoders (especially hardware decoders) may not play them. Regular MP3 can't go below 16khz in the MPEG-2 spec and 32khz in the original MPEG-1 spec.
With a modern codec like Opus or xHE-AAC they probably could actually fit an album at acceptable quality (better frequency response especially) in 1.44mb though it still wouldn't be transparent.
The low bitrates were used back in the day (late 90’s into the 00’s) for Internet radio, so I wouldn’t call them that rare. Then again, I used to run an Internet radio station.
Okay, this is like an early Christmas gift.
I've heard of Cassettes coming back, Vinyl coming back, hell people have started to produce 8-Tracks again and I couldn't tell if they were doing it as a joke or not.
Floppy-music coming back? That's a new one to me lmao
definitely seen some releases on 8-Track from some very niche labels.
Quadraphonic 8 track is awesome
And now I wait for a new form of VHS tape to record streams without legal issues. A man can dream...
Yeah $40 for an album I never care for accept a few tracks yeah right I’ll stick with MP3 files
No, none of them are "coming back." Its not a joke, but purely a novelty. They sell these in addition to their real digital releases. Its just something to make them stand out. Nobody wants to listen to music with inferior audio quality or on devices they dont have.
Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, it was pretty common to have low-bitrate options for use in internet radio (once broadband became common and bandwidth got cheaper, you started to see more 128kbps+, especially as 3G proliferated). I tossed a few on a floppy to listen to at school.
O yeah I remember back in the late 90's being lucky to have my own phone line with it's own number for local calls in my room listening to Netscape radio over a 33.3K connection, and later 56K connection for hours, and thinking how cool it was getting all that music for free with very limited ads, and stuff not played on AM/FM Radio. Now I hardly even think about it, I just fire up SoundCloud, RUclips Music, or TuneIn on my phone long as I have a decent 4G LTE signal as I have my family on Cricket Wireless at $25 a line with unlimited Talk, Txt, & Data. How spoiled we have become.
My college radio station was one of the first in the country to Livestream over Real Audio Player and it sounded just like this.
They should do these as mod/scream tracker files, this was a popular format before mp3. Could easily get 3 high quality tracks on a disk. And extra bonus would be the ability to load into a tracker and remix the songs , as I did to several years ago.
I remember the time when I made music in mod format.
Then I thought about modifying the mod format to use mp3 samples instead of uncompressed wav samples. Does anyone know if this format (mod with mp3 samples) has ever been created?
It appears like MO3 is close to what you are thinking of?
Creating it seems kinda hard, though, and it doesn't seem common enough to have tonnes of support.
@@FavoritoHJS looks like MO3 is the way. A few common players support it looks like too.
As a tracker musician, would be cool, id support it. Ofc there are modern trackers like OpenMPT (.it), FTII clone (.xm), Milky (.mod)?, Renoise (.xrns) to make music with.
Though not everyone likes trackers nor is comfortable of basically releasing stems, projects publically lol
Yeah was Really expecting Tracker Files :D
Turn on file extensions PLEASE!
Also I was expecting some kind of tracker MOD type file.
Rappers in particular seem very keen on older media distribution. Underground rap specifically has caused a big wave of cassettes coming back as well as vinyls
Punk's been doing that with vinyl for 30 years
DJs especially Hip-Hop DJs were the ones pressing up vinyl when regular people stopped buying it.
I don't really care for tapes but I'm happy with a nicely pressed record.
I'm happy with CDs. Or a cassette. Or a record. The earliest music I bought was on record. When I was a teenager, 45s was the best way to buy single songs. They weren't specialty items in the 80s, they were just how you bought music. Even cassingles didn't catch on till the very late 80s.
Switching to the high quality version on the beat drop was delightfully devilish!
So amazing. That reminds me to 1999. I tried to pkzip an mp3 file 128mbs. So I got three disks for one song. I brought the disks home and unzipped the file from the three floppies. But my 486er DX50 was so weak to play the song with winamp. Wow. I never forget this experience. Keep up the good work. Stay safe. All the best for xmas and the new year.
Yes! I remember wanting to play an mp3 on my 486 dx2 50... Finally came across a sound card, transferred an mp3 over on multiple disks, and the CPU couldn't keep up! I was bummed. Had to be uncompressed audio.
@@volvo09 mp3 did fine on a pentium 133, you were just 1 generation behind in hardware
2G voice calls ran at 13 kbps, but had a “half rate” option of 6.5 kbps when the local tower got congested. So it dosen't surprise me that these small MP3 files sound the way they do.
Yeah, but that "Half Rate" option at least to me always sounded like garbage, and a lot of time produced a situation of can you hear me now!?!?!?!
So cool to see someone talking about music on floppy disks! I've been releasing music on floppies since 2010 on my little label from Canada called Poor Little Music. I've managed to cram about 30 minutes of audio onto a floppy disk. I think of the compression as part of the art to releasing a floppy. They are always fun to release for people! And yah, you have to slide that tab over! It's like removing the tabs on a cassette!
PS I have purchased music on ZipDisk... it's a thing.
Great to hear! So, what compression settings do you use?
@@jarnailbrar6732 WMA files at 5 kbps. Looking at the last one I released. 34 minutes taking up 1.4 MB I also have dabbled with AMR and AWB files. But I find that the WMA format has slightly better fidelity.
@@quiekyi had that experience too. WMA are very good at low bitrates. It sounds like MP3 at half bitrate.
Hearing the music quality is so nostalgic! I remember when my old desktop PC sounded like that.
I was kinda expecting that these files on the floppy disks are in a tracker form (mainly cause I am into that for 1 and 3/4 years now). But well, I was proven wrong.
Is it weird that I absolutely love how these sound? Haha. Awesome video man!
The R51 was my very first ThinkPad. Nice to see that blast from my past!
@lexter Thanks!
i love it when artists do something special to get people interested in their music again , using old media or even unusual media , i still use cassettedecks , cd , mindisc etc now i have a great excuse to breakout my old laptop and floppy drive
I’d have put one song on each floppy and produced it as an actual album. The term “album” was originally coined when multiple 78rpm records with short runtimes were bundled together to form a longer work.
I’d have also compressed it using high efficiency AAC instead of MP3. It was designed to maintain quality down to much lower bitrates. With one track per disc you could probably manage full 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio with heavy compression.
i discovered the first song shown here back in 2022, and it's been one of my favorite songs ever since! i absolutely love the vibe !!
It actually sounds better than I thought it would!
I may consider doing this as a promo item for some of my interviews. Since they’re talk-based, I can get away with mono and a lower bitrate.
Another commenter mentioned that there’s little difference in size with stereo, and there can be some benefit to using stereo
@@FloydBunsen no.. mono will be smaller.
@@MrFungi69 Stereo will be bigger, yes, but if I remember correctly, in MPEG, stereo can be encoded either as two separate tracks (doubling the size of the song compared to having the song in mono on a single track) or as the difference between the tracks - if the tracks are mostly the same, there isn't much of a size difference.
@@maighstir3003 ok, i took the audio from this episode (stereo/~127kbps/aac) converted to wav and loaded in audacity, 99% equal. converted to mono mp3 (32kbps/16khz) the file is 2,788kb. converted the wav again to (what you referred) joint stereo (32kbps/16khz) and the file was the same size :) great, looks like you're on to something there. but mono sounds 10x better than joint stereo in that same space. i had to raise the bit rate of the joint stereo encode to 48kbps for it to sound almost as good, but whoa, file size is now 4,181kb :) over a mb for 12min. what will please you?
The first Album you showed sounds awesome bought it right away !
Musicdisks were released by the Demoscene regularly from the C64 and Amiga years into the PC era. Music is built through a tracker, a kind of sequencer in which to order samples. Obviously not the same as these compressed mp3s. Though, interestingly the sample rate back on the Amiga was roughly 8 Kz
You can actually fit 2.2MB on the 1.4MB floppy disks. I used to format disks on a backup unit for the SNES that formatted it to 2.2MB then I would put in my computer and fill up the disks. I never did figure out if or how to format them that big in DOS though.
There was a 2.88 MB "ED" format for 3½" floppies, but it never quite caught on. Disks and drives didn't come down in price much before floptical formats started to be announced. And once those came out (Zip disks, LS-120 SuperDisks, etc), there was no reason to pay that premium for 'only' 2.88 MB.
@@AaronOfMpls I had a Zip Disk, I actually donated it probably 8-10 years ago when I found it in my garage. Now it would just be used for storing word documents on it 🤣
This reminds me of a little better version of those late 90s toys, HitClips. They had just enough audio cues to remember the original song, but this is a bit better sounding with actual speakers. Fun novelty.
VHS used to be one my best sounding recording mediums.
Higher Gatorade. 9:07 Love your videos Colin!
in 1999, an electronic music label, orange released a vinyl ep by lexaunculpt entitled "double density" that also came packaged with bonus tracks on a 3.5" floppy.
Fun fact about that ThinkPad R51, my dad worked around that time in Denso as a main IT guy, and he was a thinkpad guy. He bought for the engineers thinkpads T41, but for production line, he bought those R51s, they were controling the production until wery recently. I just happen to have T41 from that bunch.
Dungeon Synth artists like Grimdor also release on floppy. It’s a cool novelty and great way to support artists!
Back in the 90s, I had a need to be able to quickly test audio card installations on SCO unix, so I had a floppy with an old WWF entrance theme in default au format at 8 khz. I would just cat the from the diskette device straight to the audio device.
The fact that they still have the write protect tabs rather than have them ripped off make me believe that they’re making use of new old stock rather than newly manufactured stock.
this is really cool. i've actually experimented with putting my music on floppy disks but i wasn't even able to get one song to fit without it getting mangled. they must be doing some serious mixing and editing to the sound profile to get it sounding that good.
Sheeeeeitt. We used to listen to internet radio over dialup at these bitrates.
I HAVE THIS LAPTOP! It is the newer variant with a Core 2 Duo but is otherwise identical but with all of the bells and whistles! I LOVE IT!
Those are the laptops we used in junior high. They were all hooked up to a server where we could store documents, but we were not allowed to install games or anything that would take up unnescessary space. I worked around this by bringing a 128mb flash drive from home containing games like Elasto Mania and Doom. In addition to that I had WinAmp and a few mp3s that I ran directly off of USB. Good times.
4:53 *Please wait while we transfer you to the next available customer service representative. Thank you!* 🤣🤣🤣
Wave files actually had a time in a lower format. It's like 16 colours and wasn't so popular and "forgotten" by force, I guess.
Sounds much better than expected! amazing!!!
Happy holidays This Does Not Compute.
Fascinating little look into what you can do with only around a megabyte of data.
Ah takes me back. This guy really is a modern tech person, this was the norm. It is good to enjoy modern stuff, but this is where it all comes from, and you can go way back.
Eyeliner is my favorite. Good choice!
Thank you so much. 🙏
Winamp, now that brings back memories.....
Hey Colin have a great Christmas!
There were some artists that relapsed their music on dual media discs that played on dual sided compatible turntables & CD players.
The catch was turntables that would go further in than standard vinyl label run out diameter.
Ahhh Winamp. To which I still use to this day. It really whips the Lammas Asssssssss!
Cassette tape -- not a music cassette tape, but for example a Commodore 64 cassette tape with the music formatted for the SID chip.
In case it helps anyone. ffmpeg -i "input" -codec:a libmp3lame -ac 1 -ar 16000 -b:a 8k "output"
In a way, that MP3 was of higher quality than I expected. Really thought it would be worse, more robotic. They should have gone for ZIP discs instead.
Hardly anybody has Zip drives in working order or at all. I have one however.
FrankJavCee, 3D Blast and TDNC... is this 16kbps heaven
(I can't help but wonder, could Opus significantly increase compression? that + 2.88MB DSED floppies could yield much nicer results - in fact, you could go even further and avoid using a filesystem)
I was hoping it would be OPUS too. Maybe for the next version. 😇
Thank you for telling us about 3D Blast. I support them via band camp. Love the music.
The opus codec would be the way to go here. At 16kbps, you get pretty nice quality audio. Far better than MP3. With 64kbps, you vastly exceed the quality of 128kbps MP3. Fun video!
some beautiful physical media shots in this vid!!
I'd like to see people find the colored floppys and use ones that match the album artwork for a Full Aesthetic Package! These plain black disks are ok but the neat thing about floppies in the 90s was the colored ones you could get
I love this. This was a great fun video. Good stuff man.
Have you heard music release in floppy disk?.
Me : No i havent.
Watches in amazement
The 90's introduction to MP3 was awesome. The 8khz and 11khz sounds so nostalgic, I remember the streaming radio station then used the 8/11khz and it just has an unique feeling.
I remember being 8 years old , and i managed to put the Queen song Lazy on a sunday afternoon on a floppy disk , a 1min and 7 sec song. i remember being able to do it in wave format , at x4 speed :P ...but it was possible as a fun experiment
I was really betting on them being in OPUS format.... 😔
como si fuera para antes de un estreno de una nueva canción. obvio será de baja calidad pero allí estará sonando para cualquier fanático que quisiera escucharla antes y al mismo tiempo apoyar al artista. *pero también no estaría mal una versión MIDI exclusiva en el mismo floppy disk.
-muy interesante el vídeo, gracias por compartir.
stuff like this is really cool. A while back I saw someone put the whole Shrek movie on a floppy disk., was so cool.
Id like to release some music for floppy, but create the music to suit the lower bit rate. Lofi industrial or something.
Shrek movie on floppy disk? Must have been at 16x9 pixels...
@@DavisMakesGames It was 120 x 96 pixels at 4 frames a second. Made using a custom x265 codec.
@@VanderJamesHum Ah, interesting!
The WINAMP reproduces AM Automobile Radio Stations, I remember 1968 that's how Car Radio with Rock Music actually sound Buick Special 1955 had a Fantastic Car Radio, like Seeking for Signals automatically from a Foot Switch
Let Him In actually sounds really good and modern i wanna download it
Genuinely surprised it wasn't tracker files given how big tracker was as a format for awhile.
Back in 1998 and 1999 (my year on campus), my university had computers with LS120 drives, which were backwards compatible with floppy disks, but could store about an hour's worth of MP3 on their 120MB disc (of which I own one, which I haven't been able to read since I finished there in 2001 - I suppose it's a kind of time capsule).
I would love to see more use of diskettes in the future.
I really do have to get into vapor wave, since every song you've played on vidoes I've liked.
Damn, I remember hearing my favorite songs with winamp.
I am honestly impressed by the quality regardless of the compression.
As for the ThinkPad, I have a X60t and could see it still be an amazing retro machine with XP on it.
In terms of fidelity, the best you could probably do on a floppy would be a sample-based format like MOD files. Wouldn’t really be able to do lyrics, though.
I will never understood why some people give priority to stereo versus fidelity instead. Even fm tuners in cars, they keep tracking stereo when when the thing is getting a ton of static. Drop to mono, damn I don’t have a manual override anymore!
Bring back music on reel-to-reel
This might be strange but impressive!
That's not great; floppy-disk albums should be mods instead of MP3s. Tracker songs aren't full songs, but they can be approximated pretty well at low sizes.
Or at least MIDIs. I mean, they could've even at least done a separate master for the low-bitrate digital audio so that it would've sounded better than just a simple conversion.
This is amazing!
Can’t wait to listen to chop suey on reel to reel.
This sounds pretty much like a fried copy of an audio cassette. Amazing.
Going to toss my hat in the ring on the floppy disk release train. 🤣
The Thinkpad was my dads first laptop, he got it from work.. I remember playing miniclip games on it
You featured that ThinkPad R51 on the episode where you tried to install Windows 10 on super old laptops, including a Pentium II-based ThinkPad 390E. That was a fun video to watch. 👍
A jazz album released on a Jaz Disk.
In the day, on the amiga we would copy the music into a RAM drive and load them so that there was no buffering from floppy
takes me back to listening to streaming music circa the late 90's! Back then i'd take forever to download a low quality MP3 that sometimes only sounded slightly better than these.
So thats what 'nightmares on wax' means..Rock n Roll on an Edison cylinder!
Great video Comp.
Don't blame the floppy drive. Blame winamp for not prefetching it's buffer early enough.
Good old Winamp, I still use it to this day on my Windows 10 PC
Winamp, kicking the lamas asssss
Actually 16 kbps is pretty normal for speech-only audio mp3s (or at least it was in the 90s)
You can adjust buffer.
Those old cylinders will be the next big thing
'11KHz, ohhh, we're fancy now' - I was disappointed at no embedded cover art hahahaha
WinAmp 2.78... love it... 🥰 ...... still use it for play my WMA collection with my Hi-Fi Amp and my Pentium III with SoundBlaster 16 SCSI 2 from 1992 👍👌
I upgraded to the recent version many years ago. Security flaws in older versions.
@@snowdog03 ¿Security?.. is an offline audio player .. 🤨............ you are thinking about spotify and all those new programas.. that need an internet connection .. and an open port in you PC to recibe data from who knows where 😒...
@@Ramdileo_sys If you only listen when not connected online I guess that's fine for you.
Wow! An IBM r51! That was my firs ever laptop. Mine had an intel centrino processor instead. I inherited it from my grandfather who got it through his job. Love to see more people with this machine!
The first song sounded pretty good for what it was (similar to music on those old cheap pocket radios), if I had nothing else I could listen to music like that...
When launching the video my first reaction was an mp3 is at least 3 MB in low quality. How the heck do you fit one let alone a whole album in a 1.44 MB floppy disk? Nice video!
I want to reliece some of my music on VHS
So at least now I know I am not the only one with crazy format ideas to reliece your music on lol