Aquiline Disintermediation (Translation: The Eagles Go It Alone)

Now this is interesting: "The Eagles Disintermediate Major Labels" is an article that describes how the band produced their own CD and is selling it directly (and exclusively) via Wal-Mart. All downloads are through their own site, not iTunes.

The comments are funny and insightful on this post. More than a few Eagle-haters exist. There is also a mention of the download formats the Eagles offer on their website: MP3 and something called FLAC. According to http://flac.sourceforge.net,

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation, has a well documented format and API, and has several other independent implementations.

In other news, the word "disintermediate" (which I first heard at a drunken SoMa startup fiesta in 2000, and ranks with "impactful" as one of my peeves) is not yet dead. Darn.