Neil Young has released his next album, "Living With War," on a Web site specializing in high-fidelity downloads--before the record hits stores.

The collection of songs, which will be sold as an album and not singles, is available on MusicGiants. The company sells music in the Windows Media Audio Lossless format, a beefier format that provides better sound quality than standard downloads from iTunes or other services, according to MusicGiants.

An average song in the Lossless format might be 15MB, said Elliot Mazer, a producer for Young (he mastered the 1970s album "Harvest") and a consultant for MusicGiants.

"On a Lossless file, when played back it is exactly like the CD. If you took a CD and listened to it and then listened to something on Napster or iTunes, it would sound deader or smaller," he said. "With bandwidth and storage the way it is, why would you want to go with the smaller format?"

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