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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.'"
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.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
There are plenty of free codecs out there that do a fine job. Why would a music store gravitate towards a non-free codec?
Who really uses .wma for anything anymore?
- 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. Trollbot> There are no online stores that have been able to sell DRM-free MP3's, at least not if they are
> selling music from the larger labels.
Which is exactly the only thing new here, but some asshat wanted to spin it pro Apple. If EMI is willing to A) give up DRM and B) allow non-Apple retailers in the deal why would they mandate AAC? No, when Yahoo, Walmart, etc enter the DRM Free game they will be selling whatever format(s) customers demand since they have no motive to help Apple lockup the hardware market.
Of course if EMI and the other labels only allow Apple to sell without DRM then yea, Apple wins.
Democrat delenda est
So that people could play the music on an iPod, the #1 DAP on the market? Yeah, that might be a reason.
I disagree. This is likely to change the relative popularity of MP3 and AAC. There are several reasons for this. First, the iTunes store is currently the most popular of the online music services and likely will be the first one taking advantage of this offer. As a result, a lot of MP3 manufacturers are going to be looking to add AAC support to their player to capitalize upon Apple's work and to make transition easy for existing iPod users. This will expand the potential market for AAC files from iPods and Zune, to almost all portable players. With that change, a lot more music services will consider using the AAC format either instead of or in addition to MP3.
Second, right now almost all commercial services require DRM. That means such a service must choose to either use WMA, RealMedia, or roll their own solution. Support for Real is nonexistent among hardware vendors, so they target WMA as the easiest solution. Very few commercial services offer MP3. So how does this event change things? All those WMA offerings are now going to be looking for format for non-DRM'd files that targets the iPod. That rules out WMA. So they are probably going to be choosing AAC or MP3 or both. MP3 is probably a little cheaper for licensing and has wider support, but AAC allows for smaller files for the same level of audio quality, saving bandwidth costs and speeding up downloads. Further, record companies will have already converted masters to sampled AAC for Apple, possibly making that a preference from them.
I don't see that MP3 or AAC will immediately dominate for DRM free music sales, but I bet Apple is not the only major store selling AAC downloads by then end of 2008.
If DRM was really the concern all along emusic.com would be an industry giant today
There's the small matter of having any music that 95% of people want to buy too.
No, the original article is talking about winning a standards war with Microsoft. If all the music stores turn to selling AAC, or even MP3 and AAC, Microsoft's effort to make WMA the standard media format will have failed. That's the point.
Don't get me wrong. I think the author takes the point too far when he leaps to conclusions of AAC dominance, but I do think that he may have a point about Microsoft. The interesting thing to me is that would be a victory *against* Microsoft but not one *for* any other company in particular. Apple uses AAC, but AAC is open to anybody despite what a lot of people think. For Apple, it is a victory in that they do not have to be beholden to Microsoft in this area. The same is true for nearly every other company but Microsoft.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Hell, it isn't even pro-Apple. Apple doesn't own AAC. Apple doesn't own MP3.
No, it is anti-Microsoft because as long as the format isn't Window Media, then who cares?
The only reason why AAC is better than MP3 is because it is actually a better format and also I think MP3 has some patent issues.
Microsoft would like their format to become dominate, but hopefully that will not happen because an open format like AAC is better for everyone.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
More to the point, they are going to sell DRM-free at a premium, and only a limited catalogue. Seems like its designed to fail in the marketplace to justify DRM. Nothing will change because of this.
Meanwhile, new bands will continue doing thier promotion via sites like Myspace, and eventually the labels will have to tout themselves to artists, instead of the other way around.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
since they have no motive to help Apple lockup the hardware market.
AAC is not an Apple-only format. Apple just uses it as the default format for iTunes/iPod. Many mp3 players (both portable and software players) play AAC including the venerable Winamp and it *could* be considered the next-gen mp3 due to it's built-in error correction and more robust features (namely more channels and sampling rates). So I'm not sure how that could "help Apple lock up the hardware market."
While it would be great to have DRM-free OGG files, thereby eliminating licensing fees for players and encoders and bringing costs down across the board. Although I'm not totally sure that would be the best idea since I'm not sure how they match AAC in terms of quality vs filesize and next-gen features.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
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.
> Only "open and free" to a certain extent
The part that actually matters in this context is that AAC audio is "opener" and "freer" than MP3, which is the previous MPEG perceptual audio encoding standard, and the only other reasonable choice for content producers.
An audio producer can purchase an AAC encoder for say $25 and then use it to encode their work and there are no further fees to pay to the encoder maker and there is no restriction on how the resulting AAC audio files can be sold or used. This is not true with MP3 and certainly not with Windows Media, which both require us to pay a percentage of the sale price of MP3 or WMA files to the encoder maker.
When an audio pro or record company uses MP3 or Windows Media it is like selling a percentage of every song to Fraunhofer or Microsoft.
Windows Media is well known among PC users because Microsoft uses it in their products but it is going nowhere. Microsoft is even less respected in the music industry than they are in the typewriter business where they make all of their profits.
> Why are we STILL paying for songs that aren't even CD quality?
... the older a CD is the worse it sounds due to scratches that become errors or skips and you probably don't have a backup copy either. Your iPod tracks will play the same way forever and you can back them up more easily also.
Because CD-quality songs will overtax today's technology. If you replace the AAC on a typical iPod with a lossless codec you will end up with 1/4 of the song selection and 1/4 of the battery life and if it is a hard disk iPod the hard disk will run all the time and wear out much sooner.
However Apple just announced a trade-in program. You can trade-in your AAC 128 kbit/s plus 30 cents for a 256 kbit/s version of the same song. You lose nothing compared to buying the 256 kbit/s one fresh today. In the future they will obviously upgrade people all the way up to the CD, and then go beyond that.
In music studios it has been common to work at 24-bits for a long time now, and sample rates are up to 192 kHz even in small studios. Since most of the music you bought on CD over the past 10 years is actually a degraded 16-bit copy of the true 24-bit master (it's dithered to lose the extra bits) there is no point in holding up the CD as some sort of ideal. The actual audio content is degraded to fit into your CD player just like audio is degraded in a different way to fit into an iPod.
Even mixing 64 audio channels down to 2 is a way to fit the actual audio content into consumer gear. There are compromises everywhere.
> Why are we taking several steps BACKWARDS in the development
> of digital music?
No, it is not a step backwards. The mistake you're making is that you're defining "audio quality" too narrowly, only looking at specs such as bit depth, sample rate, lossy/lossless encoding, etc. and imagining them in a best case scenario that does not exist in the real world. It is a common mistake. What is always compared is a 16-bit/44.1 kHz raw audio file and a 16-bit/44.1 kHz perceptually encoded audio file, in a music studio or a good listening room, with associated graphs and spectrograms to prove just how much "better" the raw audio file is.
The problem with the above comparison, though, is that no CD's are actually involved, and no CD players. When you put your 16-bit/44.1 kHz audio file onto a CD, right away you have greatly degraded its quality because the bitstream that the CD player sees will not be the same due to the CD's unique and funky volume format and massive error rate. Therefore the CD player will make up the missing bits (so-called error correction) which dramatically degrades audio quality.
What's more, if the CD skips even once during playback you have blown your entire advantage over an iPod. It is gone. The slight improvement in quality that you might have from the CD is gone as soon as it reminds you it is spindles and gears and little whirring parts and lots of 1980's technology. CD's wear out
If you consider other factors like power requirements, you can easily imagine a situation where user A plays their iPod LOUD all day long, enjoying every feature of every song they listen to, while user B is playing their portable CD player at half volume in order to not run out of battery life. The way the human ear works, a loud iPod is better quality audio than a soft CD player no matter what the authoring specs.
Consider a person listening to an iPod with 10,000 songs on it, shuffling away by itself, and they are deeply into the music between their headphones, not having to even lift a finger to change a song or pick a song because it is all playlists, and compare them to another person who is manually shuffling a smaller selection of CD's into and out of a player. Who will perceive the better audio quality during their listening session?
Finally, consider that the iPod did not in fact replace the CD, but rather it replaced the portable and mixable audio cassette. iTunes is two years older than iPod, and iTunes has a CD in