Well, Man of Cow Hollow, I didn't realize you were connected with June Appal, but it wouldn't change what I think.

I realize all too well the tight, almost nonexistent margins that people like yourselves have to work with.

As far as the better quality sound, that would be a negligible cost as far as both coding and storage would be from your perspective. The cost of the downloads would of course be greater due to the increased amount of data that would have to be sent. I have to confess ignorance here as to what the actual cost of the download would be for you, but simple arithmetic would indicate that the difference between a 128 download and one at 192 would be an increase of 50%.

Where I work, our backup rate has gone from 128 to 160 and finally to 192 over the last few years as storage space has gotten both larger and cheaper. While ours is only MP3 rather than the ACC M4A that you are using to encode, we are certainly happy with the change from where we started six or so years ago.

As far as the cover art, that would be even better than the equivalent material on a CD since you could easily provide full 12x12 graphics. Once you get your scans done and converted to PDF (JPG or TIF could work as well)it would be a simple matter to ship those down the pipe to the purchaser. It seems to me that this part would be easy enough to include in your plans. All you need is access to a 12 inch scanner and the artwork, and I rather suspect you've got some lps lying around that you could use for that. It certainly would make it more attractive, even if you couldn't see your way clear to the upgrade to 192.

Best of luck on your venture.