Hyperion now do downloads

[Mark Thomas]

All Hyperion CDs, including their latest releases, can now be bought as mp3 or lossless flac tracks downloadable direct from their website: www.hyperion-records.co.uk. The pricing structure is geared to classical, rather than pop tracks with a price per work as well as per track and per CD, and they all vary depending on the length of the track, work or CD. You get a 10% discount if you spend enough, too. It's all very well implemented, with downloads integrated into their catalogue. The prices themselves are reasonable too: my mp3 download of the two CD set of York Bowen's Piano Sonatas cost £14.49 as against £26.98 for delivery of the physical CD. You can also get the full text of the CD insert notes online. It seems to have taken a long time but well done Hyperion!

[Mark Thomas]

One more upside and, unfortunately,  a downside:

Having decided on a second CD's worth of tracks to get the 10% discount, I saw that if I spent just a little more I'd get a 15% discount. Maybe an even bigger discount kicks in if you really splurge?

The downside, discovered only when it came to downloading my 30 tracks, was that they don't supply a bespoke download manger, which is not in itself a problem. But despite their assertion that you use any download manager program, neither of the two which I have installed on my PC worked, so I had to manually download each track. Just a mild irritation, but an irritation all the same.

[TerraEpon]

They've had it up for a while, probably two months by now.
Also, there's NO REASON AT ALL to ever buy Mp3s from them, as it stands now, as FLAC is the same price.
Still kind of expensive, but /reletively speaking/ a step in the right direction for the lossless.

Also, they don't have all notes online, not even close.

[Ilja]

They've had it up for a while, probably two months by now.
Also, there's NO REASON AT ALL to ever buy Mp3s from them, as it stands now, as FLAC is the same price.
Still kind of expensive, but /relatively speaking/ a step in the right direction for the lossless.

Regrettably, iTunes doesn't do FLAC, so I need to convert every track to 'Apple lossless', AAC or MP3.

[TerraEpon]

Regrettably, iTunes doesn't do FLAC, so I need to convert every track to 'Apple lossless', AAC or MP3.

Which is easy enough to do. Though I wouldn't recommend using iTunes for various reasons (even if you have an iPod -- you can use other programs such as Winamp to fill that if needed). It's much better to buy the FLAC and convert, so you'll have the 'perfect' copy for furtue use, especially in this case where the price is the same.