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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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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?
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. TrollbotAAC 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.
So that people could play the music on an iPod, the #1 DAP on the market? Yeah, that might be a reason.
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.
You haven't been looking hard enough. iRiver has been making OGG-compatible players for years (no, they don't require reflashing with RockBox for this).
I'm listening to Oggs on my H320 with factory firmware as I type this.
Unfortunately, their newest players don't do Ogg any more. I recommend that you get another good player, the Cowon iAudio X5 or X5L. It has 30GB and plays Oggs.
#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!
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.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremor_(software)
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Do you have a source to back that up or is it just a guess on your part. AAC is part of the mpeg standard and a lot of chipsets have support for that. I'd be interested to know if chips that support AAC are significantly more expensive than ones that don't.
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.A lot of people can't fit their collection on their player and if the standard quality of files goes up to match Apple's offering, that effect will double. Also, it is not just disk space that is an issue. File size affects the cost of bandwidth to deliver the songs, which can add up for an online store and it affects how quickly users can download the songs, which might be a differentiator for a market that is such a commodity.
AAC is a good format, but its another "standard" in a crowded field of compressed music file formats.If I were an MP3 player manufacturer, here is how I would look at it: the number one online store for music has been closed to me thus far, but it is just now opening up and becoming a resource I can capitalize on to sell players... if I support AAC with my player. 75% of current portable player owners (which make up most of the new purchaser market) currently have iPods. If they're looking at alternatives to the iPod and I can make a move to my player easier than a move to a different competitor's player by supporting the format they're already using, that may be a very big win for me.
Obviously each manufacturer will have to do a cost/value analysis for themselves to see if it makes sense, but I suspect players that support AAC are about to go from Apple and MS, to almost everyone within a few iterations. A week ago creative had basically no motivation to support AAC. Today, it may be a move they can't afford not to make.
When you produce a product without any eager customers, your product dies. Nobody (where "somebody" is defined as "a publisher of audio content") was asking for OGG, so why is anybody surprised that it didn't catch on?
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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1) Because the licensing of mp3s is a mess compared to AAC, which is an open standard with much cleaner and easier to understand licensing.
2) AAC offers technical advantages to MP3s that are not insignificant (not to mention a saner tagging scheme).
3) Most players currently in the hands of the market (which is dominated by the iPod) play AACs and not ogg.
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And even so its apparently the #2 music store with a significantly higher market share then other competitors.
Market share for online music retailers:
Apple iTunes: 67%
eMusic: 11%
Real Rhapsody: 4%
Napster: 4%
MSN Music: 3%
Ummm... there are licensing fees for AAC as well.
c fm?product=MPEG-4AAC
http://www.vialicensing.com/Licensing/MPEG4_fees.
Cheers.
Mark
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."
Unless, of course, Microsoft also offers DRM free WMA files in its Zune Marketplace.
But of course, that could never happen, right?
[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).
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
Statistically speaking, for each of your players, there are 7-8 players out there that do support AAC. You're in a minority. Since selling AAC files will make retailers more money (30% decreased bandwidth fees) I'm guessing a lot of retailers will start offering them as an option, if not as the only format for sale. Since most retailers will be offering them most hardware manufacturers will most likely soon start supporting AAC, thus your next player probably will support it. Even if hardware vendors don't care about what music retailers are selling and are concentrating mostly on the ripping CDs market (most people) how many of them do you think will ignore the opportunity to make it easier for them to steal customers from Apple by supporting the same format as the iPod?
Because...AAC is OPEN & ya know, FREE? You can put a proprietary DRM wrapper on ANY audio format which is what Apple did.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Did you not read the news releases?
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!"