Nielsen: More Teens Now Listen To Music Through YouTube Than Any Other Source

techcrunch.com

11 pointsstevewillows3 comments

Probably for the same reason MTV sucks now days. Music videos. I don't enjoy the bitrate, but I go on and watch music videos regularly.

This makes me sad - no one appreciates quality any more. Youtube's audio bitrates max out at 160kbit.

Hydrogen Audio treats Lame -v4 setting (~165kbps) as perceptual transparency. Meaning loss, but transparent.

Youtube doesn't use MP3s, but AAC for hd content, which provides even better quality. There are numerous tests that compare AAC at 64kbps to MP3 at 128kbps.

Often artists upload music attached to HD still picture, to ensure that high quality encoding is available.

The low quality is not an issue with Youtube audio bitrates, but problem stemming from people uploading low quality sources. Audio re-encoded multiple times. It is common to find a mono music with 12khz cutoff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com