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The Death of the Music CD

Posted by Zonk on from the ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead dept.

Rick Zeman writes "According to the Washington Post, the next new music format will be...no format. From the article: 'What the consumer would buy is a data file, and you could create whatever you need. If you want to make an MP3, you make an MP3. If you want a DVD-Audio surround disc, you make that.'"

3 of 483 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I doubt it by tuffy · · Score: 5, Informative
    I mean, at first glance, I thought: "hey, this is a great use for FLAC". Then I realized that because FLAC takes so much CPU time to decompress, CD players that could play it don't exist (if they did, they'd be more expensive).

    FLAC actually takes very little CPU power to decompress; less than MP3, certainly. But they only compress to about 50% so a CD full of them could only hold two albums instead of one, which isn't gaining a whole lot. So I tend to leave my FLACs at home and convert them to something lossy to take with me.

    --

    Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  2. Re:No format by Ingolfke · · Score: 5, Informative

    MP3s lose information due to their compressions scheme. So if you converted from and MP3 to OGG to WMA you'd end up with file missing all of the information from each round of compression. Using a lossless encoding format, like FLAC or WMA Lossles, would allow you to copy to whichever media format you prefer.

  3. Re:Sound's Great... by Znork · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Copyright law says that you need permission from the owner of the copyright for those bits, and that allows that owner to set the terms."

    Eh, no. Copyright law says you need permission from the owner to copy those bits. Once you purchase them, you hold all property rights and can do whatever you wish with the bits, except copy them, as the right to copy them is taken from you and given exclusively to the author for the duration of the copyright term.

    Take some time and read up on the first sales doctrine, and dont mistake intellectual property for physical property. The 'property' in 'intellectual property' is not the product itself, it's the right to prevent others from exercising their own right to copy their property. The fact that someone owns the _copy right_ should not be confused with the ownership of the _copy_.

    That said, DRM is a grey area and the lobbying propaganda usually tries to argue that it's only intended to stop illegal copying, which would fall within the legitimate realm of a copy right. However, we all know that is not the case; DRM usually expands far beyond that exclusive realm, and tries to control what devices you can play things on, where you can play them, when you can play them, etc.