Free 24bit/96KHz Audio Tracks from HDTracks.com

I just finished downloading some free stereo 24bit/96KHz FLAC audio tracks from HDTracks.com. I read about this offer in the Audio Junkies blog, which mentions the new download song sampler. So, I decided to give it a try.

I'm pretty impressed with HDTrack's Download Manager. It is a nice little application for viewing the progress of a download. When you download tracks from some of the other online music stores, the process can seem a little confusing or clumsy. HDTrack's Download Manager is also pretty fast. It downloaded 5 tracks in about the same amount of time it took me to write this post.

If you're interested in checking this out, just go to HDTracks home page click on the "HDTracks 96/24 Ultimate Download Experience" box.

I haven't had a chance to listen yet, so I can't really comment on the quality, but I'm sure it will be pretty good. After all, HDTracks was founded by David and Norman Chesky of the audiophile-record label Chesky Records.

Another Music Store with Lossless Tracks.

Just discovered this online music store called Mindawn after reading about a new release from Roger Powell (former keyboardist for Utopia/Todd Rundgren). Here's what they say on their 'About' page:

In the summer of 1999, Shawn Gordon founded theKompany.com, a software company specializing in creating developer and desktop software for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. TheKompany.com develops both commercial and open source software.

In late 2001, Sharp introduced their Zaurus line of embedded Linux-based PDAs. TheKompany.com jumped on this exciting new platform, creating nearly 40 embedded applications for the device. This led to the development of portable media players supporting both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, in both standalone and streaming formats, in addition to the development of extensive video playback technology.

In the summer of 2002, Mr. Gordon followed his long passion for progressive rock music and acquired the popular internet radio station ProgRock.com. One of his first acts was to switch it from MP3 streams to Ogg Vorbis streams. This also led to the development of the freely available tkcOggRipper, with which the user can easily rip CDs to Ogg Vorbis files on Linux and Windows.

In late 2002, Shawn followed what to him seemed a logical evolution and founded ProgRock Records as a way to help nurture and support some of the fantastic music coming out of this often overlooked community.

After many brainstorming sessions with some of the ProgRock Records artists and theKompany.com software developers, we realized that we already had most of the technology we needed to pull this off effectively. Now we also had a financial model that also made sense to artists and consumers alike -- so it was time to realize the dream and make it real.

Mindawn was launched in September 2004 and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of theKompany.com, Inc.

It looks like their focus is progrock, which is pretty interesting. Maybe there's other specialty stores like this that focus on specific genres. I'll have to search around and see if I find anything for electronica.