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MP3 Winners and Losers for 2003
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Menta over at MP3newswire.net just posted his annual winners and losers list in digital music for last year. The big winner is Apple for dominating MP3 portable player sales and the dramatic success of its iTunes service. Napster savior Roxio and the small independent record labels also made the winners list. The losers list include SonicBlue and MP3.com. Interestingly, Ogg Vorbis made the losers list, not because of the codec per se, but because iTunes has both catapulted the AAC format to number two and stimulated Microsoft to pour more of its efforts ($$$) into WMA and the iTunes clones, leaving little room left for the open source alternative. The 2001 and 2002 winners list are worth a look too and each have links to that year's losers list."
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that one of the original arguments against Vorbis adoption was "But all the MP3 hardware out there uses a dedicated MP3 decoder chip, so they can't just 'upgrade the firmware' to support Vorbis", along with countless other arguments that deal with the fact that in any given project, 1 codec is easier to deal with than many.
Well, because we now have MP3, AAC, and WMA, all becoming popular, that means that instead of hardcoded support for 1 format, any company that's serious about making music software or hardware is probably going to want to support a plugin style architecture, which means that supporting a 4th, 5th, 6th, etc, format becomes much easier, so things like FLAC and Vorbis have one more barrier to entry removed from their paths.
The Free desktop that Just Works
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Yes, we'll all start to whine and complain but there is no way to stop it.
Without DRM to whole business chain of the entertainment industry is fucked. So they'll enforce it.
With this background fact, you won't wonder that OGG was turned down. The encryption shemes will make sure that the song only play on certificated players. However a player which supports formats which can be used to illegal copies will never get such a certification. So the manufacturers will avoid these formats at all cost.
When you watch this development the original movitivation of the OGG development team seems to very naive and economically clueless. While there might be some niche applications for OGG, it will be useless for the downtrodden masses. Basically the development of OGG has merely an academic value.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
How come there was no mention of Emusic on the loser list? They switched to a much more restrictive user agreement and had a mass exodus of their subscribers.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
For choosing WMA, for endorsing WMV.
Why?
Because Microsoft isn't a team player. There is no real technical benefit to WMA or WMV: All the 'next gen' codecs are better (ogg, wma, aac) than mp3, so the only real advantage to WMA is secondary.
Do you trust Microsoft? I don't. By using WMA, you give them more power and more clout, and like any big organization with the power to dictate international and national standards... I don't trust them. Unless of course you *like* paying taxes. Instead of money, though, Microsoft collects in marketshare and power.
Anyway, I hope you like living in a Microsoft future... I'm trying to avoid that, myself.
GPL Deconstructed
From the article:
The big winner is Apple for dominating MP3 portable player sales and the dramatic success of its iTunes service.
The dramatic success is Apple using its iTunes service to promote its iPod. iTunes has made a miniscule amount, purely a leader for the iPod. The iPod was here before iTunes, iTunes was envisaged as a way to make iPods more successful. iTunes was as much as a breakthrough on the music distribution scene as MP3 players were on the musical device scene were, but iPod deserves the praise, if iTunes weren't here another would have filled the gap, iPod and other MP3 players created the inertia and it is them that should get the praise.
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
The consumer - we get sued, screwed, and DRM'd out of our right to enjoy the music we purchase the way we want to.
No, the only reason to use WMA is if you're married to Windows. You won't get much use out of it outside that little circle...
To be honest, it is one of the stupidest names I have ever heard. I'd feel embarassed about telling someone about my "Ogg Vorbis" collection.
The MP3/AAC licensing costs are miniscule compared to the cost of the rest of the components. It's probably in the range of 50c - $1 per device, or less.The cost of the RAM/HD is 100x any licensing costs.
The file transfers would be disgustingly slow because of the overhead required to transcode every file to the machine. And it would need proprietary software to put music on it (to do the transcoding) which is one of the few complaints people have about the iPod.
Vorbis is nice, but it is inferior, sound quality wise to WMA Pro, AAC, and MusePack, and it's never going to be popular (in a marketshare sense). I know it hurts to hear it, but it's true.