[via BetaNews]

That could be interesting :-) It is the first time I read somewhere that an On-line music download service wants to deliver real high-quality sound files to “audiophiles”, that means for people who can make a difference between 192kbps and 256kbps MP3 encoding.

Ask many an audiophile what their number one complaint about digital music is, and you’d likely get the same answer from just about everyone: quality.

The door has been left wide open for a high-fidelity music download service, and with the further ubiquity of broadband and larger capacity digital music players, file size is no longer an issue.

Enter MusicGiants. The Nevada-based company quietly launched its self-titled service September 29, but if my first look is any indication, the service may be about to make a big splash in the world of digital music. For a $50 annual fee, users are given access to a catalog of music from EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music.

While the current music selection obviously pales in comparison to that of iTunes or Napster, the company says that it is in the process of securing deals with the other major labels to expand the catalog.

MusicGiants users can download each track for $1.29, which initially would be “free” through a $50 song credit given for joining the service. However, unlike competing services that encode their songs at 128 kbps, all tracks from MusicGiants are in Microsoft’s Windows Media Lossless format, which encodes songs between 470 and 1100 kbps.