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An Overview Of Present, Future of Music Technology
prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum magazine is running a feature article on the state of music and current digital formats. They point to an interesting phenomenon in the digital music world that Steve Jobs emphasized as well: for the first time in music history, the next big format was not about better quality (SACD and such) but about better portability (MP3). 'It was only five years ago that the music industry was facing a civil war over the next-generation disc-based music format -- the successor to the wildly successful CD. At that time, hardly anybody doubted that the music would be encoded optically on a round plastic disc the size of a CD.'"
All the future formats will be about replacing CDDA with "DRM".
Oh, it will be marketed as being about increased audio-fidelity, but it's all about getting rid of those horrible "insecure" CDs.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
...lots of telcos payd huge license fees for 3G because that would be the next big thing... Thats why I have such unshakeable confidence in Gartner and such, when they predict the future in, say, 10 years :-)
Whilst working for a UK Hi-Fi outlet in their engineering department, I have come across a number of players, particularly Sony, which are capable of playing SACD, but I have not noticed any growth in the number of SACD discs available to purchase, it is to all intents and purposes a dead format. MP3 on the other hand is big and getting bigger, in the past four months the number of MP3 players we see passing through our hands has quadroupled. As the article points out, the demand for wifi connections to these devices is also increasing. I fully expect to see the most flexible devices take the lions share of the market, but no doubt the crippled Sony player will have its share of adherents too.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
128kbps outta be enough for anybody....
5 years ago mp3 was already an avalanche and making the same to movies was just around the corner.
cd is good enough for store sold, holds an unit of music riaa is willing to sell and on just about any consumer system cd itself isn't at fault but the crappy speaker/amplifier used to play it.
it's going to be hard to convince people to switch to a 'better' format when cd really sounds good enough, is already widely spread, and people have cd players everywhere.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So I end up wondering... With the business they want, and with self-destructing DVD's already a common thing, plus time-limited DRM's, how long until we are reduced to the age of "renting" everything... even that which we purchase fully?
And then, on another front, how long before people start realizing that if people just want to hear the music, Digital-Analog-Digital conversion completely strips DRM... Then how long before some crazy laws come out that make that illegal, and anything that can "Facilitate" such functions illegal... so no computers will have line in anymore, and posession of microphones will result in a still fine and jail term?
@Whee
Um... Wasn't that the point of cassette tapes? They were a dominant format for a while and the reason they replaced vinyl was their portability and robustness (maybe play-time, too.) Certainly it wasn't about sound quality.
On another note, why does MP3 have to replace CD? For my money, I really don't think that there's any likelihood that'll happen. CDs are simple to use, store enough data, are lossless, and come with pretty packaging. All good things. I can't see why there can't be two parallel distribution systems.
As a technical matter, I just wanted to clarify the error in the article, when the author states: "When people say "AAC" they usually really mean AC-2. Based primarily on adaptive delta modulation technology as refined by Dolby Laboratories, AC-2 was developed for professional audio transmission..." AAC and AC-2 are completely different algorithms. Dolby did develop AC-2 on it's own. Dolby later worked jointly with AT&T/Sony/FhG on developing AAC, which shares some similarities to MP3, but uses improved filterbanks and entropy codes (among other improvements).
Filesize: But when a new computer comes with a 200Gb harddrive do most people these days even care that MP3 maybe isn't the most effective compression algorithm? I mean, you've got plenty for space so who cares if the typical music collection is 5Gb or 10Gb?
Quality: Most people are happy with CD quality. 192Kb MP3 pretty much gives you that quality. Most people are more than happy with MP3, especially on a portable device where listen conditions are 'suboptimal' shall we say.
Portablity vs DRM: This is the killer feature of digital music. The music industry wants to stop it, for everyone else it is all about being able to move music around. This is the one 'feature' that people do not want to see go.
What I've trying to say here is that people are more than happy with MP3 and the 'problems' with MP3 really aren't an issue for the majority of people, while these replacement formats kill the one feature that people really care about.
Good luck marketing your new formats, music industry. You'll need it!
--
Simon
The premise that we can't do without DRM is based on a couple of unfounded assumptions. One is that people will always avoid paying if they can. This has already been proven wrong by the success of iTunes Store (and to a lesser extent competiting offering), despite the fact that there are plenty of sources of free music on the internet (especially P2P software like Kazaa and eMule). The second is that DRM actually works; actually there have been convincing arguments that this will never work, especially considering the fact that a D->A->D conversion will produce very good results (probably as good as 128 bit MP3) and is basically impossible to prevent.
Then consider how much of a turnoff DRM is for customers. I think a good analogy is the early software industry. It used to be that floppy disks were crippled with "copy protection" technology, and a lot of software required the use of a hardware dongle. Nowadays these approaches have gone the way of the dinosaur and software companies tend to rely on much, much lighter weight protection like a simple license code. The reason is that copy protection was more likely to deter well-meaning novice users than hardened hackers, resulting in reduced sales. The software industry eventually realized that the right price points and distribution mechanisms were going to raise their revenues and profits a lot more than these "protections".
To me it seems logical that the music industry will eventually go the same route, even if it means that today's leading players will be dethroned by more forward-looking challengers. They're only clinging to DRM now because they are terrified of cannibalizing their existing revenue streams. This might work for a while but history suggests that they can't hold back the tide of technology forever.
Peer Pressure
Anyways, look out for many of the DRM features lying around to be activated in the near future. The biggest concern will be in memory cards, as most of them have built in features to erase the file after a certain number of plays.
Also in the near future: DVD players having their playing rights revoked (a code on the disc only allows keys stored on approved players to access the content. Both of these are not "coming-up" technologies, they exist at this very moment in hardware, it is just a matter of time before manufacturers activate them.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Argh. Yeah, and they keep repeating that mistake, too - really bothersome in an otherwise well-written article.
Apple never mentioned AC-2 anywhere. In fact, they usually expand AAC to Advanced Audio Coding in their explanations. I wonder where the author got that wrong idea.
Let's see how long it takes for this myth to spread across the internet...
MP3pro sucks ass. Plain and simple. How do I know? I tried it. Here's the issue: I can hear MP3 compression artificats clearly to 192kb on most sources, and to 224kb on some of my "favorite" music. Certain Boston sequences are particulary difficult to encode well even at 256kb when played over decent headphones*.
x
The problem is that even the registered version of an MP3pro converter would max out at 128kB, with 192kB "quality". Nice, but not really "enough". Everyone seems to be racing to the 96-128kb SIZE point, without realizing that it's not really all the great to listen to unless there's a lot of background noise, or the equipment you're playing it on comes in a heat-sealed clamshell. And 64kn in every format I've listened to sounds somewhere between AM and FM radio, with digital artifacting added as a bonus. I'll take 48 or 64 for spoken spoken word, but please don't say you use it for audio unless you are listening to it while mowing the lawn.
I finally gave up on lossy formats and started re-ripping everything in FLAC. Now I can transcode through foobar2000 to whatever the format dujour is, or to a format which will fit in the space I have on my portable player.
* Sony MDR-V6 in my case...quite the bargain IMHO, but get the Beyerdynamic 250/290 replacement pads - they're much more comfortable. See http://www.audioreview.com/PRD_118127_2750crx.asp
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well I THOUGHT the music industry was heading in the right direction with their CD one side DVD other side discs, but I guess I was wrong.
I don't want portability. I'm not going to store 15,000 songs on an MP3 player. Heck, most of them will sit there unused for months. I want quality, DVD quality specifically. The difference between DVD and CD audio is just amazing. People might say there isn't much of a difference between the two, but chances are they're either deaf or have never heard the two compared to each other. It's just sooooo much better than past technologies. The problem is that no companies are putting their music out in DVD format.
Any of you who have audigy 2s, go get your discs and search for your DVD audio sampler disc. You'll have to install creative's junky music player to get it to work(I haven't found a DVD audio plugin for winamp that works with it), but it's worth it to hear the difference. Go on, do it, you can uninstall everything when you're done. You'll be amazed.
for sufficiently small values of "history".
After all, the phonograph record was a step down in quality from live music, but ever more portable tha a full band or orchestra.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
There was a Slashdot story earlier about an interview with MPAA's Jack Valenti, who said: "I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it". He really doesn't have a clue, does he? A consumer gets the content, has a decoder, and gets decoding keys where needed (somehow), and to prevent interception, decoding will have to be done at the endpoint, the consumers' equipment. And then you expect to be able to ensure that content never leaves the device once decoded? Get real.
Consumers are faced with extra hassle, limitations resulting from DRM features, and building those features into equipment and software makes everything more complicated and expensive. Hackers on the other hand (both black hat & white hat), will have circumvented DRM features in no-time.
The interesting point here: the barrier it presents to hackers is removed quickly, and isn't an issue after that, but all disadvantages it presents to consumers, REMAIN. If, in 10 years from now, you want to write a software DVD player, chances are at some point you'll still have to deal with region codes, CSS and other useless crap, and DVD-enabled equipment will always be more complicated and expensive than it has to be because of the included DRM features.
Concluding: DRM just adds useless overhead, extra cost, and doesn't do squat to prevent unintentional copying (aside from whether you think it should). I wrote a rant titled "CONTROL versus FREEDOM" some time ago, that isn't of much interest anymore, but its conclusion still holds. For me, it means that I won't invest any money in products that have significant DRM features built in. CD's with copy protection? Game consoles that you're not allowed to mod, or run your own software on? Stick it up your .....
If they do, then that could be a big plus for the Open Source OS's.
And if it does wind up a government mandated thing, then would the Open Source OS's be forced into following suit? (ie, will Open Source OS distros have to come from outside the US?)
On the other hand, if the DRM'd formats *aren't* forced on us, then they'll never take over.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
There is no doubt that it is important in that its activities drive technical developments in certain directions, especially in the electronics and computer industries, but it isn't as important as it thinks it is. Its products are ephemeral and one day it will be of interest only to historians. Anybody who doubts this should look at the history of music; music is no longer driven by competing cathedrals, protestant churches or local rulers. When Bach was a superstar composer, he was part of a musico-industrial complex that no longer exists. Bach survives because he was also a great musician, but most of the composers of that era are completely forgotten. When Mozart was a kid, cathedrals tried to enforce copyright by excommunicating anyone who tried to memorise and reproduce the tunes of their new settings. This business model no longer works very well.
And my point? That many people already may be seriously pissed off with the "Music Industry" but their activities, because they are small scale and local, are under the radar. Just like rock music was, once, when its performers couldn't afford proper instruments. We don't actually know where the next groundswell will come from, but we can be fairly sure that DRM-crippled reproduction equipment and the like will mean that the next new thing will come from left field. Rather than read about "Record execs pay research organisation to talk up their latest revenue protection concept" or whatever, I would like to know more about what might be happening in genuine grassroots music, and whether recording,transmission and reproduction technologies are aiding it, impeding it or are irrelevant.
WAV isn't compressed format at all (check filesize against audio data rate), IS fully (not virtually) lossless, and although the format wasn't designed for it, being raw audio data, ofcourse you could stream it.
Quite a problem if the owner does not know that they have to charge the unit before use.
This problem is so bad that Philips opened a unit specifically to put new batteries into the units before sending them back out.
The unit though it can be used as a removable HDD will not play mp3s that you simply drag and drop onto the drive.
It requires going through Philips (Java based) DRM software, and it takes a long time to load up the device, around 50 seconds to transfer a 3 minute 128kbps mp3 via USB.
Not a product I could in all good conscience recommend.
Hope that helps :)
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Yes, increased portability is behind the success of the iPod and other portable players. However take a look around you the next time you're riding the train, taking the bus or walking down a busy street: count how many people who are actually listening to ANYTHING, be it a MP3 player or even a portable CD player (excluding cell phones). Chances are it will be less than 1 in 10 (even for here in NYC).
The portability market is finite, and it has just about reached the saturation point. People in general only listen to recorded music in 3 places: home, the office, and the car. The first two of which do not benefit from increased portability. Who cares if the listening device+media is as big as a brick or as small as a postage stamp in their home/office?
This brings me to the car. The only portability that benefits the car listener is the ease of transferring and listening to one's music (which for the overwhelming majority of the population is on CD or cassette) from the home/office to the car and vice versa in the least steps possible. Right now the simplest way is a two step process: #1:take CD from home/office unit, #2:place in car stereo. In all the different portability solutions available, none comes close to rivaling the ease of use of the CD solution.
Well actually, one solution comes close: those people that download ALL their music, place it directly to a memory card and then plug it into a car stereo that accepts that memory card/compression format. This is very unlikely to take off as it requires a fundamental shift in the physical media used to distribute recorded music to the "non-connected people" aka "the buying public". Why? Because if the original source of the music is on a CD, that automatically adds another (time-consuming) step to the process (converting from CDDA to whatever file format becomes the next big thing).
Other than the glaringly obvious advantage of getting something for free (that isn't), MP3 succeeded because it brought us greater ACCESSIBILITY to our music. Mr. Home/Office/Car Listener could now get (timely) access to exactly the music he wants without having to leave his home/office. It wasn't (and still is not) because he could carry his whole collection in a nifty little device that fits in his shirt pocket, he just burns the music (uncompressed) to CD anyway.
The majority of the public does not need increased portability (the MiniDisc fiasco should have tipped the industry off to that). We need increased ACCESSIBILITY: getting the music I want, where I want (which for most of us is just the home/office/car), when I want (which is NOW).
The compression/the device/the size/the method of transmission/the protection is insignificant to me, just MAKE IT HAPPEN in as few steps as possible. Right now their is only one ubiquitous digital device (other than the CD player) that could serve as a point of access to OUR music, and you probably already know what it is:
The cell phone.
Anyone listening?
Actually, that is how music is recorded most of the time. Thing is, the album, after being recorded, is made into a final mix (where everything is blended together) and then sent to mastering.
So in order to be able to do "selective listening" as you propose, you would have to have each seperate track available. And by doing so, you of course mutliply the size of the song x the number of tracks. Basically, the only place you could fit this onto is a DVD, and a whole album with all the tracks available would not even fit on a single-sided DVD.
And then there's the problem of playing those and controlling the tracks. On a computer it is easy enough since that's how the labum was created in the first place. But you would need a whole new line of home and portable audio devices designed to play and manipulate such a "format".
Didn't mean to shut down your idea completely though, it's just not very feasible unless it is compressed AND unless they narrow it down to mixing the basic tracks individually and just making those available (vocals, guitars, bass, drums, percs, horns...), because a single song mix, in the recording studio, is made up of a minimum of 30 to 40 tracks most of the time. And in some cases, it can go quite higher than that.
So it's not just a matter of delivering it, it would be a nightmare for sound engineers to do a full regular mix (for today's CDs) using all the tracks, and then remix each basic instrument seperately. The music industry is cutting corners as it is during recording... you would be asking them to spend more money on something that would be used by a minority of people that are either hardcore audiophiles or people that are sticking rich with an itch so spend.
This would be very similar to surround-sound music (albums playing in 5.1 surround on DVDs). It never took off because it was hard to justify the costs for such a small market share. It will never sell as well as CDs (though more and more surround-sound concert DVDs are being produced) because its just not accessible to everyone. Even those DVDs I mentioned only sell to the basic fan base of the band that's being promoted... who's going to buy a 30$ concert DVD of a band they don't know?
My 2 cents.
Cheers!