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Apple's Move May Make AAC Music Industry Standard
stivi writes "BusinessWeek has up an article about a war: a standards war in the online music business. Apple's recent deal with EMI to sell DRM-free songs from the publisher's catalog on iTunes may clinch the iPod's AAC format as the industry standard. The article talks about possible reasons why AAC might marginalize WMA, as well as deals with some of the implications of drm-free aac-standardized industry. 'Online music stores, like Napster, Yahoo Music, URGE, and all the others that sell WMA songs will be forced to consider jumping into the DRM-free AAC camp, and thus become iPod compatible, and in so doing become competitors of iTunes. Apple will be fine with this, because in its range of priorities, anything that sells more iPods can only be a good thing. With time, practically all music stores will be selling iPod-compatible songs. This will be considered a Richter 10 event at Microsoft.'"
What exactly makes this different than .mp3? Other online music stores have had the option to sell unrestricted .mp3 files for plenty of time and still haven't decided to do that. Yes, AAC is arguably better than MP3, but both are quite "iPod compatible".
and so it will never capture the market share that mp3 based hardware (chip) players have.
I have so many mp3-only players - why on earth would I convert to a diff format when mp3 meets ALL my needs?
now, if all players were firmware upgradable, fine. but the fact is, most are chip based and if there is no
AAC support in the chip, you are SOL.
AAC is a nice idea, but its not 'everywhere'. mp3 IS everywhere. that's all that matters, in the end.
--
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liqbase
Every digital music device can play it, and it's already a more well-known and common standard than AAC.
I know AAC is technically superior to MP3, but so was Betamax. Popularity beats technology a lot of the time, especially when the technical advantage is not exactly glaringly obvious.
Either way WMA is going down thought. As it should.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Apple's Move May Make AAC Music Industry Standard
So selling DRM-free AAC files will dethrone DRM-free MP3 files as the industry standard?
How, exactly?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There are plenty of free codecs out there that do a fine job. Why would a music store gravitate towards a non-free codec?
Either way WMA is going down though.
Dammit.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Ok, tell me why they wouldn't simply use low-compression .mp3, or the often "underlooked (and therefore lamented)" .ogg format? The only news here is that non-drm files are being offered through I-Tunes, and that it might harm DRM-WMAs, which is a Good Thing (tm) for consumers.
Who really uses .wma for anything anymore?
How many chairs would Balmer have to throw for that R10?
First post?
neither one play AAC... how will this become the standard?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I hope everyone that was complaining about DRM will now got out and use iTunes and the new non-DRM format and make it a huge success. If this "surge" works, then DRM will die everywhere. If sales do not increase dramatically, then DRM will return and dominate.
oh wait!
- It doesn't suck.
- It sounds better per data byte than MP3 or WMA.
- It's cross-platform (or at least (minus Fairplay) more cross-platform that WMA).
- No Microsoft. Apple may not be a company of saints, but they're at least an order of magnitude less evil than Microsoft.
- And speaking of which, AAC will win because Microsoft knifed their "Plays for Sure" partners in the back with Zune. ("Hey lets piss over major consumer electronics manufacturers to bring out a DOA product that loses us money!")
Crow T. TrollbotIt would be a shame if we standardized on the inferior MP3 format. WMA and AAC are both much more advanced than MP3 and they both sound a lot better. I personally hope we switch to AAC.
I'm still waiting for the OGG players to come out (though i fear i may be waiting forever =\)
AAC isn't proprietary to Apple, it's part of the MPEG-4 standard.
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Lucent's recent assertion to MP3 patent rights ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/technology/23pat ent.html?ex=1329973200&en=6a3c7d2b220acec5&ei=5124 &partner=digg&exprod=digg ) combined with this move by Apple and EMI probably have doomed MP3 to an also-ran status.
If you're not familiar, everyone who licensed the MP3 patents is now being threatened with a lawsuit by Alcatel-Lucent because they co-own the patent rights, but weren't party to all the licensing that was going on before.
This seems to be one of the key points that the author relies on - that AAC somehow gives the advantage to Apple. I really don't understand how this is the case. This may drive iTunes sales, but Apple is more concerned with iPod sales. Since other players will be able to play music purchased on iTunes (I believe the Zune, god forbid, plays AAC), this could in theory hurt iPod sales (though that seems a bit remote).
Transcode
And now some more words: Yes, it'll dick all over the audio quality, but the reality of it is most people don't care about high fidelity audio. Those that do would rather now download losslessly encoded audio anyway.
My point is it doesn't matter if AAC becomes the de-facto standard, because transcoding it isn't that much of a chore if you need to put said files onto an incompatible player.
DRM was the real barrier, not the file format.
So that people could play the music on an iPod, the #1 DAP on the market? Yeah, that might be a reason.
So you're opposed to MP3 too?
Ogg is all well and good for ripping your own collection but if virtually no-one is selling music in that format it's irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.
... If all music players play AAC which not all do. Those "el-chepo" ones from your local flea market don't. Neither do the ones from Cowon, Creative, Philips, Sandisk (everything but the e200s), or Toshiba. If you have one of those, then this announcement means nothing to you. But if you're player is made by Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, or Sandisk (just the e200s), then you're safe because these players will let the sounds of your favorite artists issue forth from their AAC-encoded files.
Until they all do, this isn't the "eureka" moment that people think it is.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Good, someone started this thread.
I'm classically in the middle of the market that doesn't care about quality for 75% of my collection. You're right that with the DRM stripped, it won't be long before we should be able to just convert an entire folder's worth of AAC into mp3 that legacy mp3 players can use. I made quite a study of Ultra Low End 3rd party players, one as cheap as $10! Plus, my watch doesn't play AAC files.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Look, people had LPs, and willingly went to 8 track. People had 8 track and willingly went to cassette. People had cassette and willingly went to CDs. People had CDs and willingly went to iPod/m3-players. It's not that great a stretch to see people go to AAC or some other format that has better sound quality at a given bitrate, especially if it ushers in a DRM-less age at the same time. The hardware manufacturers such as Apple/Creative/etc will *certainly* not have a problem with this -- they'll make it as easy as possible to upgrade, and will encourage people to do so in whatever way they can - because they want to sell more hardware.
The OEMs who make generic MP3/WMA players are not likely to pick up a new chip to decode AAC files unless there is high demand for it, because it will noticably affect cost. Also, most people I know, unless they are buying from iTunes or a WMA music store, rip their music into MP3 format because its the lowest common denominator. Any MP3 player, be it an iPod or some no-name USB stick for $15 from a drugstore, understands the MP3 format. With disk space being relatively cheap, the size difference of a MP3 file ripped in alt-preset-standard or alt-preset-extreme versus the size of a similar bitrate file in another format is less of an issue.
AAC is a good format, but its another "standard" in a crowded field of compressed music file formats. I wish, if chipmakers started supporting more than MP3 or WMA, to support OGG as well as AAC.
I honestly expect better from well known sources like Business Week.
EMI clearly said that music stores could made their own choice as to which digital format to make their catalog available in. WMA, AAC, MP3... It is up to the music store who licenses EMI's catalog to decide what format to make the music available in. Apple has chosen AAC. Frankly, I wish they had gone with MP3 since every music player under the sun supports MP3 playback. But with the way people who license the MP3 codec have been being successfully sued for large amounts of bank lately, I can see why Apple would avoid MP3 if they can.
>>the #1 DAP on the market?
Whats a DAP? Is it like an iPod?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
#1 Because its backed by the largest Online Music Store #2 Its backed by the MPEG working group (and its a subset of MPEG-4) #3 If you don't know why #3 is important try to remember why MP3 is called MP3, and where did it (partially) come from All in all it always seems that MPEG-group made formats always get the prime. So yeah, im willing to believe that AAC will superseed MP3. Besides, ive been using it for about 1 year now (yes, i re-ripped my music), and whilst i had to have MP3s at about 192kbs VBR, i get the same with 128-160kb, thus i can carry more music with me! Yay!
According to a recent article, less than 4% of online users buy music downloads, with an average yearly expenditure of under $20. Obviously, most of the music on most iPods is MP3's. Why removing DRM from AAC matters is not clear, since most people with portable music players already get their tracks by ripping CDs.
Have you read my blog lately?
Its more likely that we will get DRM free WMA first.
I think we might as well just have everything play mp3,ogg (yes, yes thats the container not the codec I know),aac and wma and pick whatever bloody format you want. I think we should just have DAP players compete on price and actual features rather than artificially based on what formats they support (though it'd be fun to have a good DAP that only supported royalty free formats to bring down the price). This way you could get your DRM free music from iTunes, Yahoo, Napster, ZuneStore or EMusic or next big thing and use it on any player you like.
Even better, Allofmp3 allowe(d|s) you to select what bitrate and format you wanted and really that should be standard for any online music store.
Alternatively if they were just selling DRM free music and HAD to pick a format for some reason then I wish they'd just stick to mp3 because its compatible with everything sold thus far (except some Sony players IIRC) and at 256kpbs I (and I suspect most people) cannot hear the difference between the different formats, and I really wish Apple would do this - yes I know AAC is a great standard and if you can decode mp3 you can likely decode AAC but there are more players out there that support mp3 than AAC and I doubt that most of them are going to get a firmware upgrade (maybe w/ Rockbox). I do want DRM free music but my DAP doesn't support AAC and I hate iPods.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
This may drive iTunes sales
I don't see why. Part of what drives iTunes sales is that it's the only online store that can supply music to your iPod (except those that sell MP3s already). Therefore, if everyone starts selling DRM-free AACs, it's unlikely to drive more business to iTunes. Also, it means that pretty much all new MP3 players will support AAC (if it's really so common-place), and therefore it won't necessarily boost iPod sales.
In the end, this wouldn't help Apple except by reputation (by having bet on the winning horse). Apple still has to make sure they're selling the best portable device in order to keep selling them. There isn't anything shady about it.
aac is an open standard. wma is not free, mp3 is not free.
"With time, practically all music stores will be selling iPod-compatible songs. This will be considered a Richter 10 event at Microsoft."
Given the Zune already supports aac, I don't think Microsoft is too worried.
The article is talking about the next generation audio format war which incidently may just deficate on itself in the end. You can compare these formats against mp3, but that is beside the point.
ogg>aac>wmp
Is mp3 still patent encumbered? I get the feeling that aac is in spirit the same as mp3 when it first came out. A codec you have to pay for, but at least it isn't linked to a specific platform.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremor_(software)
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Geneva Conventions.
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Transcoding is a crime against humanity (at least those of us who have working ears). Why do you hate music so much? If you transcode, the terrists have won.
How come you can get a ton of different car stereo racks that all play non-DRM'd AAC(burned onto a disk), but you can't get a portable digital music player(didn't want to say MP3 player) which supports non-DRM'd AAC?
There seems to be a big difference in the respective marketplace that I can't figure out.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
when was wma ever not marginalized? i mean, other than it being the default ripping standard in WM and the companies enforcing Win-DRM, who intentionally ripped their audio to wma? Did anyone here do that?
--- these days, what with business and stuff, you gotta get your emails...
Why would a music store gravitate towards a non-free codec?
Oh the usual reasons: lies, bullshit, hype. In short - "marketing".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Exactly! Apple owns the online music market and if it starts selling music without DRM in AAC format than any portable music player manufacturer with a brain will quickly add support for AAC's to give themselves a shot at increasing their own market share.
If Steve Jobs really has deals with other labels in the works as he indicated in the Apple press release announcing the EMI deal (in which he's quoted as saying he expects over half of the music on iTunes to be available without DRM by the end of this year) then hardware manufacturers would be crazy not to support AAC.
This is great! Soon I can stop the relatively painless process of burning all my DRM tunes to audio CD and then re-importing them as nice manageable mp3s. God, that used to take minutes and minutes...
DAP is a great sealant. In fact, many plumbers and others in the small repair business swear by it. I'd say it's probably number 1 amongst those who know of it. Here's two URLs for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAP
http://www.dap.com/
As a matter of fact, Tim Allen's standup routine (amongst others, I'm sure) references a great bit about DAP and filling the crack revealed when a plumber bends over, but I'll omit that here.
cheers
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To the mods: Ignore this post
2^3 * 31 * 647
Yeah, well, while I'm no fan of Microsoft, let's not beatify Apple just yet. At last count, Apple had sold at least an order of magnitude more DRM-infected songs than had Microsoft. So you might want to recalibrate your Evilometer.
For that matter, Apple's just seen fit to introduce a 30% surcharge on DRM-free songs. Since digital music introduces economies of scale that should reduce song prices, why are they increasing?
This is exactly what I thought when I heard about the DRM-free tracks on iTMS. Not only does it make great PR and provide a great way to show the industry that people are willing to pay for music without being forced, it pushes nearly every hardware vendor on the planet into making AAC support one of the top priorities in the next year, which is both a win for consumers and for Apple.
Now that any player can be made compatible with (some, and hopefully in the future all) iTMS tracks, you can bet every music player manufacturer is salivating at the idea of finally getting access to the other 90% of the market!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
At least in terms of encoding vs. those purchased from the iTS:
An unencumbered AAC file has the ending m4a.
An encumbered one has the ending m4p.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Ummm... there are licensing fees for AAC as well.
c fm?product=MPEG-4AAC
http://www.vialicensing.com/Licensing/MPEG4_fees.
Cheers.
Mark
The deal with EMI isn't exclusive. It just costs so much that other digital music providers aren't going to be able to justify the cost per track that they're going to have to pay back to EMI. That's why the DRM-free files are $1.29 rather than $.99. I don't know that most people will understand the difference between DRM and non-DRM files, and those who do will know that they can buy the track, burn it to a CD and rip it to whatever and save themselves 40 cents a track.
Also, the problem with the AAC format is that Apple is keeping the specifications of the DRM encoding really close to the vest. The same guy who broke the DVD encryption algorithm also cracked the DRM for AAC files, but getting that technology from them is also ridiculously expensive.
When other digital content providers can justify paying out the ass for DRM-free EMI content, it will significantly weaken Apple's position. Also, the cost of going non-DRM might decrease when other labels follow suit.
There are plenty of free codecs out there that do a fine job. Why would a music store gravitate towards a non-free codec?
MP3 is patent-encumbered, whereas I believe AAC is not. Thus, there's nothing to stop someone from writing a Free AAC codec. In comparison, "Free" MP3 codecs are vulnerable to patent infringement suits unless somebody is paying licensing fees. The only advantage OGG has is that somebody has already written Free codecs. Somebody (maybe even Apple) will likely soon do the same for AAC if they haven't already. The big advantage AAC has is that Apple is behind it. That counts for a lot, considering iPod and iTMS market share.
What is marginalizing WMA is new releases of WMP that break backwards compatability with older files. See here for a music publisher where Microsoft WMP 11 broke their sales model.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
MP3 has won, for all the sales of iPods, the number of devices playing MP3 DWARFS it. Think of every player, every MP3 playing phone, every modern music center.
Nobody is going to switch to AAC, anymore than people without iPods used iTunes. Do you imagine they will replace every device just to play AAC? Nope, at best, if Jobs is lucky they will sign up to iTunes and run some transcoding software. But most likely they'll look at the half assed offering Jobs is trying to pass off as DRM free and see straight through it.
Unless, of course, Microsoft also offers DRM free WMA files in its Zune Marketplace.
But of course, that could never happen, right?
According to this Seattle Times article, Microsoft is in negotiations with EMI to sell DRM-free music as well.
EMI was clear that this will be a level playing-field -- they will wholesale unprotected tracks to all of its resellers. Now that said, I understand why many might think this is a real boon for AAC, however isn't it quite possible to have the exact opposite effect? Quality issues aside (yes flame on, audiophiles) I think most people who are using AAC extensively has been because of the iTunes store. It is probably the best store, and bu default iTunes will use AAC for all your own tracks, in addition to the store. The use of AAC I could attribute to the close ties to iTunes and the iTunes Store. If the market now opens so the 'Rhapsodys' of the world can sell un-molested MP3, WMA or OGG files, there certainly would be less of a need to use iTunes to make purchases. iTunes will always import your DRM-less audio, and will continue to do so. So couldn't this new-era of digital delivery actually be a real benefit to all of the 'other' formats out there? Think of this - if you could buy all your favorite tracks from another store in the format of your choice (OGG perhaps), would you not tend to use that store more? Brad
IIRC, the surcharge is only applied to per-track purchases. If you buy an album there is no increased cost.
[i]MP3 is probably a little cheaper for licensing and has wider support.[/i]
Actually, AAC is an open standard and is royalty-free - it would cost other manufacturers to add AAC support to their players (as Sony already has - they have added AAC support to some of ther Walkman devices through firmware updates).
At last count, Apple had sold at least an order of magnitude more DRM-infected songs than had Microsoft.
Sure, but have they ever abused a monopoly to illegaly harm competition? Have they ever made their OS phone home and refuse to update if they decide they don't like your serial key (oops, OS X doesn't use a serial key)? Have they ever blatantly ignored court judgments against them?
The original poster didn't say that Apple's never done anything bad, just that they're much less evil than Microsoft. Putting DRM on audio files is nothing compared to some of the things MS has done.
For that matter, Apple's just seen fit to introduce a 30% surcharge on DRM-free songs.
That should be read as, "For that matter, Apple's just seen fit to raise the price of songs that are twice as high quality as previous ones by only 30%."
I think that the premise of the statement "Apple's Move May Make AAC Music Industry Standard" is absurd. While I consider a move in the right direction, the AAC format is not by any means the only format capable of storing music without DRM. In fact, a number of formats do not provide any standardized facilities for encryption and "rights management" (like MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Monkey's Audio, etc.). It would seem more reasonable to me that stores already selling WMA-encoded audio with DRM will simply sell WMA-encoded audio without DRM, rather than switch to AAC, if for no other reason than their target audience already has players capable of playing WMA.
I think the onus lies on Apple, not the others, to adopt support for DRM-free WMA (and other formats) in their players.
Microsoft would like their format to become dominate, but hopefully that will not happen because an open format like AAC is better for everyone.
This further underscores why Microsoft should stop fixating on the music/video business and turn their attention back to their core business.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What does it matter whether Microsoft offers DRM-free WMA or not?
Their market share is negligable.
The question is... what DRM-free format will Rhapsody pick? One that's compatible with the iPod out of the box, or one that requires them to keep updating the Harmony kludge that they created to play their DRM-encumbered files on the iPod?
Not only does it make great PR
Yeah, I thought a similar thing, then I got around to heading over to the iTMS and looking for some actual tracks... Huh, not a word about it. No way I can see to search for these tracks. I guess I'm supposed to stumble upon them at random, and say hey, that's an option? It seems dumb to me considering all the free publicity they're getting out of this. I like having an a la carte option like iTunes, I like it with no DRM even better, but man, every time I hit the iTMS something new about their messy, busy, ugly, poorly designed and criminally slow interface is bound to end up pissing me off in about 3 minutes. Why, Apple?!
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Or just have your music manager do the transcoding as it puts the music on the player. This machine is a 1.66 Core Duo(nothing real special in other words), and foobar 2000+lame transcodes at about 18x real time. That's 4 minutes per hour of music, which is well within the bounds of convenient enough.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
both of them play AAC... why wouldn't this become the standard?
"I DARE you to make less sense!"
It should be interesting to see how the iPod/Music sales model presages future decisions @Apple about Mac/MacOS sales. If Apple becomes richer than God through iTunes we might see OSX on PC hardware. If iPod sales just tank, that'll about seal it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This will be considered a Richter 10 event at Microsoft.
I love the smell of earthquakes in the morning...
One of the main reasons I still stick to MP3 is VBR and MP3gain, which lets me "normalize" all my songs. I haven't found another utility that lets me do this. Apparently, MP3gain has experimental AAC support, but the software hasn't been updated in two years.
In the interests of science, I grabbed an audio CD, slapped it in a Vista machine, and used Windows Media Player to rip it to MP3. I then uploaded the MP3 to a different workstation and played it on XP. I also downloaded the file back to Vista and although there was the classic waiting glitch on the download, the file came out unmodified. I can't tell that it plays on Vista because the audio system on the machine was crashed (which might be another reason to avoid Vista). However I'm reasonably certain I will be able to play those files on the Vista machine itself.
What does this prove? Well, at present they aren't doing any mucking with at least one DRM free format. Also, the fact that I did this with the audio system crashed was in a way a hopeful sign. I don't know whether the crash is DRM related or no, although I am inclined to lay it at the feet of Flash, since it crashed in a flash video playback. But the whole system is not BSOD'd, which actually is quite a positive development.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From TFA:
;-)
"AAC-format supporters include some notable names, including Microsoft's Zune. So come May, the 16 people who own one will be able to buy EMI tracks from iTunes and presumably play them on that device."
Only 16 people own a Zune? I would have guessed at least 25 or so.
Because...AAC is OPEN & ya know, FREE? You can put a proprietary DRM wrapper on ANY audio format which is what Apple did.
Look, people had LPs, and willingly went to 8 track. People had 8 track and willingly went to cassette.
Some, like me, went from LPs to reel-to-reel, RTR. Actually I didn't so much go from to the other, instead what I did was the first tyme I put an LP on my turntable I'd record it on my RTR then I'd put the vinyl away for safekeeping and listen to my tapes. I skipped 8 track and just went to cassette after I lost my tape RTR deck. Lately, the past several months, I've noted stores carrying more and more turntables. Some have built in usb ports. So I've been thinking I may get a turntable myself, if I can find a good source for new vinyl LPs. If I do then I'll also be looking for a new RTR tape deck. As for cds, I finally got a cd player for when I run and rollerblade, it worked better than the tape player I got for the same thing. My stereo also has a cd player as well as two cassette tape decks and an auxilary input. But I haven't gotten an mpg3 player, iPod or otherwise, yet and I don't think I will get one. As least not until my cd player dies and prices come down.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Wake me up when these clowns start selling high quality Ogg Vorbis files.
I'll be listening to the wind and the rain until that day comes.
Apple will be fine with this, because in its range of priorities, anything that sells more iPods can only be a good thing
Really? So when is Apple going to stop dicking around with Harmony compatibility?
Apparently the licensing cost for the three formats are:
What units? Encoders? Decoders? Songs?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are plenty of comment with direct links and quotes, so you can get the full scoop. But AAC licenses, the ones you quote, are for the players, not for the music stores.
MP3 has license fees for distribution, which means that the music stores pay a fee as well as the device manufacturer. With AAC the device manufacturer pays, but the music store does not.
Shawn's Tech Articles
So, you know all those people who said that Jobs's "we only use DRM because the labels make us" statement was a self-serving lie?
Yeah, they're looking pretty fucking stupid right now.
This helps Apple because Microsoft can't bring itself to fully support MPEG-4 (which includes the AAC audio layer and the AVC video layer, an order of magnitude better than the SP/ASP video layer), worrying it will supplant their proprietary Windows Media format.
MP3 is the audio layer of the 1992 MPEG-1 standard. The video layer of this standard remains the only format compatible with all software video players, which tells you a lot about how Microsoft has helped advance video standards.
AAC is everywhere, including in all those nifty HD-DVD and Blu-Ray decks coming up. And yes, it delivers MP3 quality in half the footprint.
Apple is confident selling video online because it uses MPEG-4 AVC. Today, three years after its adoption by the rest of the industry, Microsoft refuses to make available an AVC codec in Windows Media Player. YouTube jumpstarted itself by embracing Flash video, developed by one of the AVC contributors. Apple knows that the WMP cripple can only count on the Windows installed base. All in all, Microsoft is in serious trouble.
Given that the RIAA is completely against any drm-free music - anywhere on the planet (make that the galaxy... make that the universe ... make that the multiverse!), Apple and EMI are in for a rough ride!
In fact, I am surprised that the RIAA didn't keelhaul EMI over this, right off the bat!
"Avast, ye scurvy corporate swabs, prepare to be boarded!" is what they will be screaming at the next RIAA meeting as being the impending result of this move by Apple and EMI. "The music pirates will have a field day," the RIAA execs will whine as the billions still come rolling in and they continue to sue ten year-old girls out of their college funds...!
Cap'n Record Scratch!
Somebody needs a humor firmware update, compiled with some new sarcasm and "average joe" satire modules.
is AAC gapless? mp3 isn't.
The thing is, the ones you listed as supporting AAC are 98%+ of the market.
Think of it this way - as EMI said, they sell songs at wholesale and don't care what companies do with pricing. So you have Apple selling AAC files with no per-song license, and company X selling MP3's instead which do have a per-song license. No matter what Company X does, Apple is going to be making more money. Pretty soon Company X will figure out the better way to compete is to also sell AAC files.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Music isn't a production-line widget. Real costs have always been a tiny fraction of the price. Accordingly, since most of the cost of music is the licensing, you would expect the price to increase over time, not decrease.
In real dollars, a single track for $1.29 is a steal over the per-track price of a single from nearly any point in the history of music sales. For reference, $1.29 today is about $2.50 in 1990 dollars. And that's not even counting the convenience of shopping from home or the availability of previews to avoid the obviously bad tunes. Once upon a time not that long ago, a track from a 45 cost the same as a gallon of milk. Now that milk is $3 and the music is $1.29. The price of milk really isn't affected by anything but inflation (if anything, there are more dairy cows today than back then and they produce more milk thanks to hormones). You'd expect them to track more closely in price.
It's not percentage of player models that matter, it's percentage of players sold. iPod has 80% of the units sold, and most phones, the Zune, and several other players support AAC. Revolutions take place at far lower majorities than 90%.
One point that seems lost is that Apple will allows previous downloads to be "upgraded" for an additional $US 0.30. That means that somewhere around 20% of the >1Billion songs already downloaded from iTunes Store can be redownloaded as un-DRM'd AAC. This seriously helps mitigate "lock-in" and I think will help what the OP posits, making AAC the new digital standard.
MP3 is a second gen audio coder, it achieves about 10:1 compression ratio with resonable sound quality. First gen audio coders like the original ATRAC and IMA provided 4:1 or 5:1 compression ratio. AAC and WMA are 3rd gen audio coders that deliver up to 20:1 compression ratio with good results, or 10:1 with very good results.
As we all know, Steve Jobs is quite anal about his products (which is good for us consumers), so to get high quality sound and still be able to fit "1000 songs in your pocket", a 3rd Gen codec was required.
IMHO Apple did the right thing, rather than try and reinvent the wheel and develop their own codec, they went out and licenced a known working (and open standard) codec and concentrated on what had not already been done, namely a DRM system that worked well enough for consumers to use it. Also I might add, the only reason M$ developed WMA/WMV etc, was to maintain their OS monopoly by making competing OS's unable to play mainstream online music/video.
Having an independent standard format become the *actual* standard is good for everyone. Now in a perfect world, we'd all be using MPEG-4 (aka QuickTime), H.264, AAC and ODF.
But they are the ones who put drm in it, making the format untrustable.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
So, you think we should use Ogg Vorbis or FLAC on our portable music players? Sure, they work fine on desktop computers, but move to a portable device, and the situation is different.
Vorbis: Less efficient to decode than AAC. Even MP3 is less efficient than AAC. This means you get shorter battery life from your player. Battery life is very important in portable devices. Furthermore, unlike AAC, Vorbis is not widely supported "out of the box" on chips used to power these devices. So, a manufacturer would have to make extra effort to support a format that hardly anyone uses, and which degrades battery life.
FLAC: Again, larger file size means less battery life. More importantly, portable players have limited space. Users won't be keen on filling up their devices with a fraction of the amount of songs they are used to. Further, most people use crappy earbuds to listen to their portable music, therefore any quality advantage is lost. And users have to wait longer for their tracks to download.
AAC: It's an industry standard, very efficient, widely supported. Offers good quality at small filesizes, helps preserve battery life. Seems like a perfect fit for this particular application, doesn't it?
... and then they built the supercollider.
The real significance here is that Apple have killed any possiblity of Microsoft locking the music industry into a format they control. The whole point of PlaysForSure was to try and create something similar to the PC industry -- where anybody could produce software or hardware to a compatible standard, but Microsoft controls the keys to that standard (Windows or WMA). PlaysForSure didn't work out to well, so the Zune was a second stab at the same goal.
It simply can't happen now. Maybe AAC will displace MP3, I wouldn't mind seeing that happen. . . My intuition is that MP3 and AAC will both be with us for a long time -- but either way, the future belongs to a format that Microsoft doesn't own. Microsoft has been put in an intolerable (from their viewpoint) situation -- one where they are "just another competitor" in the marketplace. That's all the Zune can be now, merely another competitor among several. They can't be The Emperor, which is the only thing they ever want to be.
Bear in mind that AAC is supported by practically every new mobile phone due to their MPEG-4 spec. If there really is a market for `walkman' style phones, drm free AAC's will cause havoc with wma supporters.
No, people use the iTunes store because it's a really good store that works well. The other stores suck - they are horrible to use.
Therefore, if everyone starts selling DRM-free AACs, it's unlikely to drive more business to iTunes.I think it will. Seeing as the other stores suck - people who use other players can now start buying their songs from iTunes, rather than just ripping from CD as they do now. After all, nobody uses the other online stores, even though they do support the other players.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I believe the Richter scale is obsolete. Aren't they using the seismic moment or "moment magnitude" scale now?
Still, it seems to me that even if AAC becomes an industry standard people will be playing MP3 files for a long time to come.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why are so many people so stupid when it comes to AAC? Everyone jumps on it as a proprietary format owned be Apple with license fees and can only be played on iPods.
NONE OF THIS IS TRUE.
It's an open standard, not owned by Apple, it's free to distribute content in AAC (not sure about fees for putting AAC support in a player), and there are plenty of AAC compatible players out there. The only thing nefarious about it was Apple's DRM, and hopefully that is on the way out.
As I understand it, large companies are worried about Vorbis specifically because it's free. Remember now that patents don't work like copyrights -- even though Vorbis is an original work, it could still come under patent issues if it makes use of ANY technique which had previously been patented. And I assure you that, like all software, it does.
I'm sure someone could turn up later with patent claims against AAC, too. But by using a patented codec and making the royalty payments, the large corporations get two things. First, they ensure that the whole industry will be in basically the same boat, and so they probably won't be the primary target if someone comes in with a lawsuit. Second, they demonstrate good faith which can help reduce liability.
Besides all that, codec payments are a tiny fraction of the costs, so there is not a lot of incentive to switch to a free format... especially one that requires more CPU to decode.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Why would you just assume that? Look at the other responses, all of which make perfect sense. Do you have some alternative form of Tourette's in which you involuntarily spout cynicism?
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Y'know, that's a big part of the success of the iTunes Store, and one that's getting overlooked in all this "iTunes is anti-Trust" hoohaa. Finding a good review of an online store other than iTunes is an almost impossible task. From Buy.com to the Zune store, they've pretty much stunk.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"I told him that in in fact no online music store sells unprotected MP3s"
I keep reading this lately - why do people think this? There are plenty of online stores that sell DRM-free music, Beatport.com for one.
Look at the other responses, all of which make perfect sense.
I'm glad you indulge in the fantasy that the world around you makes perfect sense, and that people (and especially corporations) act perfectly rationally.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It may all be moot if iTunes/EMI/Everyone else sell the non-DRMed files at a greater price than the DRM-files. I think the number I heard was $1.29USD for DRM-free files and $0.99USD for the FairPlay-ed stuff.
At the $1.29USD price, it is likely cheaper to just order the CD from Amazon or somewhere and convert it to a DRM-free file after you get the disc. I know we live in an "I want it now" society, but a 30% jump in price is likely enough to make more people willing to wait.
Of course, people who know nothing of FairPlay or only have an iPod and a short-sighted view such as, "I'll I will ever buy is an iPod" will go ahead and buy the FairPlay'ed music in much greater quantity than the non-DRM'ed tunes, prompting the recording industry to say, "Gee, DRM presence doesn't really change sales."
I'll be happy to wait it out and see which way all this goes, but until non-DRM'ed music is selling for the same price as DRM lock-in crap is today (or less, of course), I'll consider this trend of DRM-dropping as closer to defeat than victory.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Nuff said.
It's too little, way too fucking late...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I can't believe that not a single person has mentioned the fact that even though you buy a track DRM free, it doesn't mean that they can't still add the watermark that actually connects the file to YOU when you buy it from the store. So when you give it to your friends, they can track all the copies in the wild back to you!
In my experience one of the biggest reasons why people still use MP3 for everything is the fact that so many people call portable music players "MP3 Players". So when Joe consumer goes to rip his CD (a challenge in itself) for his "MP3 Player" he is going to rip it to MP3 just because its the only thing he knows. Sure awareness about other formats is improving these days, but for the most pary people still listen to MP3s on their "MP3 Player".
No, people use the iTunes store because it's a really good store that works well
Well, I said it was "part of the reason". You can't deny that it helps drives sales to the iTunes store when you can't buy a song from Napster, for example, to play on your iPod.
Seeing as the other stores suck - people who use other players can now start buying their songs from iTunes...
That's a very good reason why iTunes' dropping of DRM would be likely to increase iTunes sales, but not as to why other stores using AAC would increase iTunes sales.
Just a minor point, aac is mpeg 4 audio and is administered by the Motion Pictures Expert Group. Apple popularised it, but they do not own it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
personally I hope ogg takes over the world, but that would be common sense not business.
Outside of North America the ipod does not have the same level of market dominance, the other 7.6 billion of us might prefer mp3.
I've seen both. ALAC and FLAC decode about the same with the source I have here. The advantage to ALAC is that it has a nice transport - mp4 (m4a), and nice encoder (iTunes). Performance is neck-and-neck, otherwise. Source simplicity, which matters none to real people, is much in ALAC's favor. FLAC looks an awful lot like other Xiph products' source - very busy, and very little whitespace (i=1+23|more; all over the place), and SOOOOO many files, even if it compiles to a rather small 40 KB (decoder only). I realize FLAC was not a Xiph product at first, but funny it is how the source looks common to Xiph source. ALAC's source, ala Hammertime(ton), is a stroll in the park (easy) compared to FLAC's busy downtown streets and back alleyways (forever lost). Relatively, no one uses either, but more no ones use FLAC.
MPEG-4 AAC audio is already the professional standard for perceptually encoded audio. It replaced MP3 audio not only in the MPEG-4 spec, but AAC has even been "backported" to the MPEG-2 standard to replace MP3 there as well. Every device that supports MPEG-4 H.264 video playback supports AAC audio. HD-DVD video: AAC audio. Blu-Ray Disc video: AAC audio. iTunes+iPod: AAC audio. PlayStation3, PSP: AAC audio. Zune: AAC audio (yes).
... it is fucking hilarious to suggest Windows Media is even relevant. NOBODY USED WINDOWS MEDIA FIVE YEARS AGO WHEN IT WAS HIP AND THERE WAS NO iPOD. NOBODY IS USING IT NOW. NOBODY WILL USE IT IN THE FUTURE. (Yes, you made some with your 'puter. Good for you. Means nothing. You gained NOTHING.) It is ridiculous to suggest that professional audio people are going to take the extra step of converting their audio to WMA using Microsoft's ridiculously immature My First Audio Studio tools in order to pay MS a vig on every file they sell.
It isn't just that AAC has much better audio quality than MP3, which is true. It isn't just that the technology involved is 10 years newer than MP3, which is also true. The main reason that AAC is the standard is that MP3 has a so-called "content tax" and MPEG-4 does not. With MP3 you pay for the encoder, and then you pay again for every file you sell, whether on disc or over the Internet. It is the audio track from a DVD and it is not indie or Internet friendly. It may be a good way to store your CD's on your computer in 1999 but it is not good for replacing the CD for the audio industry. MPEG-4 follows the QuickTime model where you pay only for the encoder and the AAC files you create are your own to do with as you please, similar to CD. This is important not only because the music industry doesn't want to start paying a vig where none existed, but also because there is no system in place to track the vigs, it is not going to happen.
So if you are a content producer and you use AAC instead of MP3, not only does your audio quality improve, but it costs you less money also. It is very, very, very hard to beat an argument that pleases both the music people (higher quality audio) and the business people (keep the vig for yourself).
As for Windows Media
In the music industry, if it doesn't play on an iPod it is not an audio file. PERIOD. The iPod plays all of the standard files plus Microsoft's WAV which is just raw audio, a clone of AIFF. If you take an audio file that plays on the iPod and convert it to something that does not play on the iPod, then you have converted an audio file into a non-audio file. PERIOD. Just because you can burn 10 WMA or Ogg files to a CD-R does not mean you have made an audio CD. Maybe that is impressive in some geek circles but not to music and audio geeks and has no bearing on the music and audio market.
There is nothing at all out there to compete with MPEG-4. The argument that is being made here in this article happened around 2000 or so and it is long over. The fact that it is becoming apparent to people outside the audio industry is the end not the beginning of the process.
In other news: If you just buy a damn CD you can have your audio in whatever the hell format you want. Is AAC really going to replace a real recording or pcm? Oh wait, this is Slashdot; I mean "wooh! yeah apple! yeehaw!"
Have you ever heard? Ogg is as dead as a dodo.
This is surreal
The WHOLE POINT of getting DRM free content is that you can make it whatever format rocks your boat.
and then put it on whatever device takes your fancy!!!!!!
You can burn it to a CD! Lets start a branch talking about how this move will cause the return to dominance of the diskman!
I really am speechless
A bit late, but I meant that iTunes selling non-DRM music may increase their sales. I don't agree with the notion that this will make everyone adopt AAC nor that this would be good for Apple.
I heard recently about some of the Samsung Yepp players supporting Ogg Vorbis as well. A quick search turned out at least a couple of models that list support for it:
l ayer/yp_t9bab.asp?page=Specificationsl ayer/yp_u1vels.asp?page=Specifications
http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/mp3player/mp3p
http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/mp3player/mp3p
(slightly confusingly, not all Samsung websites do mention Ogg support for these same models)
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
Maybe this will finally make Creative add AAC-support to their players!! :D Jey!!
This sounds somewhat apologist; your argument seems to rest on the unstated implication that songs with twice the bitrate are worth something like twice the price.
30% more isn't twice the price, shithead. They're also DRM free.
The AC's rewording of the comment implied that raising the price of songs with twice the bitrate by "only" 30% was actually a bargain; which is only true if you accept that they were in really worth a lot more than that. Perhaps, oh, I don't know... "something like twice the price". Which was what the argument basically implied. They're also DRM free. That as may be, I was specifically debunking the AC's dubious argument, which rested entirely on the bitrate. FWIW, I think the increased bitrate and no DRM is easily worth 30% over the standard format (for me); whether or not the base price is worth it is another issue.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Surely, they meant a 10 on the Deckchair scale?
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
It would stand to reason that those whose professional success rode on the sales of their product would not retain their employment for very long if reason had so little influence in their decisions that they chose a codec because of "hype" or "bullshit". Since the other posters pointed out significant and convincing reasons for a DAP to use AAC and for online music services to vend the same, perhaps you could elaborate on your conviction that any corporation's choice to do so would be irrational.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
I didn't say "lockin", you did. I said popularity, which is not the same thing, and I would argue is dependent on things like marketing, licensing, and consumer confusion. Maybe you think I'm trying to make a point about Apple's "lockin?" Well I'm not. My point is that success sometimes has more to do with marketing than engineering, and I think BetaMax makes that point fairly well.
MP3 is simply the most popular format, to the point that the generic term for things like iPods and Zunes is "MP3 player." If you want a better point of comparison, how about Ogg vs. MP3. Ogg is losing (lost, I would say), because outside of the geeks no one knows what it is.
See, I happen to think that is the wrong question. I wonder how many people know that their player plays AAC without having to look it up. The Slashdot crowd is generally more tech-savvy than the average person, and even here there have been a number of comments from people believing that AAC is propietary.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I didn't say it was, fuckwit.
A pathetic straw man is just as bad, cock gobbler.
The AC's rewording of the comment implied that raising the price of songs with twice the bitrate by "only" 30% was actually a bargain; which is only true if you accept that they were in really worth a lot more than that.
Blah blah blah. Compared to DRM encumbered files at half the bitrate, and especially compared to the rest of the industry, yes they are a bargin. Just STFU and go back to what you do best: sucking big, fat cocks.
As for the straw man accusation, I didn't put words in the person's mouth; I explained where the implied meanings came from. The argument and its context don't make much sense otherwise, but please feel free to illustrate what the person actually meant if you disagree. Compared to DRM encumbered files at half the bitrate, and especially compared to the rest of the industry, yes they are a bargin. Considering I already said that in the message you just replied to (""FWIW, I think the increased bitrate and no DRM is easily worth 30% over the standard format"), I'd say we're both in agreement, but that doesn't make you any less stupid. Go re-read the message you replied to; I'm not repeating it here. Just STFU and go back to what you do best: sucking big, fat cocks. I like that you mention they have to be "big" and "fat". You evidently thought about that quite a bit...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Sorry, here's the "link below" that wasn't:
f m?faq=1#1
http://www.vialicensing.com/Licensing/MPEG4_FAQ.c