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.'"

Comments

MP3

[hokiejimbo]

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".

Re:MP3

[peragrin]

AAC is MP4.

So an overall better codec. at 128kbs it sounds roughly the same as an 196kbs mp3. Or roughly the same as an OGG at the same bit rate.

the 256kbs mp4 that EMI wants to sell drm free is only good news.

MP3's staying power is odd. one can add support for both easily, yet most players seem to think WMA is the only way to go. They could support MP4, MP3, and WMA.

Re:MP3

[rucs_hack]

The only advantage I can see is that you can bookmark within an AAC file. For me that's a pretty major point.

Re:MP3

[cayenne8]

"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). "

And, unlike mp3, AAC can be taken all the way up to lossless in quality. If they'd sell that to me w/o DRM, I'd be fighting my way to the front of the line to buy music from them.

I don't care if it is FLAC or AAC-lossless, but, if they'd just take the ONE more step to go that far, I'd be happy to do business with them. And since the iPod can already play AAC-lossless...they could easily go for it.

Re:MP3

[dgatwood]

In my mind, the premium is really for the higher bit rate (256 kbps instead of 128 kbps). The DRM-free status is more of a free perk.

Re:aac is not in EVERY hardware player

[e4g4]

AAC isn't everywhere yet, I'll agree. However, if Apple actually moves it's entire catalog to unprotected AAC files, it seems to me quite reasonable that the vast majority of players released from that point forward will support AAC, considering Apple's dominance in the online music sales market. If one sells music player hardware, wouldn't you want it to support the most popular format (for sale) on the market? Especially considering AAC doesn't require royalty payments.

Perfect Timing

[ObligatoryUserName]

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.

Re:Why not MP3?

[Llywelyn]

First, MP3 is embroiled in multiple licensing and patent issues that make it legally more murky than AAC. Second, as you point out, AAC is superior technically to mp3 while still being an open standard. It has a standardized tagging system, is better at lower bitrates, more channels, etc. All of which make it significantly more desirable than mp3 from the standpoint of a content provider, as well as from our standpoint as consumers.

Oh, and stop using betamax as a comparison point. Please, just stop it. Betamax lost the format war more because of bad marketing, licensing, and format confusion than because of lockin. Even to the degree that it could be path dependency, such is not a relevant comparison point here since AAC is already a widely adopted standard (not as widely as mp3, I'll grant, but I'll ask one simple question: what percentage of players in the hands of consumers can play AAC? Considering that it includes the iPod, the Zune, the PSP, and a great many phones its probably quite high).

Here's what's killing WMA

[Nom du Keyboard]

might marginalize WMA

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.

Further ..

[ackthpt]

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.