Music Labels Working On Digital Album Format

Nerdfest writes to mention that just weeks after Apple announced their new "Cocktail" digital album project, the four big record companies are moving forward with their own project dubbed "CMX." The new digital album will feature songs, lyrics, videos, liner notes, and artwork. "However, this may be of little interest if CMX isn't compatible with iTunes, the default music software for iPods, iPhones and Apple computers. Whereas labels are eager to resuscitate the album format in an age of singles, Apple is concerned with selling hardware, including a tablet computer rumored to be launching this fall. The major labels plan to launch CMX, which is just a working title for the format, in November. It will reportedly be 'soft-launched' with a few select releases."

Comments

My digital album format

[RDW]

Sounds like both Apple and the Major Labels are infringing on my patented Digital Album Format. The working project title is 'Directory', but it looks like I'll now need a TLA to compete with Big Media - 'DIR'? DIR can hold any reasonable number of 'tracks', or even multiple albums and movies, each of which is 'tagged' with all the relevant data and album artwork, and all of which are already compatible with iTunes! Recently I've also implemented 'a brand new look, with a launch page and all the different options.' Like CMX, 'When you click on it you're not just going to get the 10 tracks, you're going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products'. Obviously I can't give away too many details at this point, but I can tell you that I'm thinking of calling the DIR launch page 'index.html'.

Re:My digital album format

[Kratisto]

Your technology sounds extremely promising, but how do you plan to keep track of multiple DIR files? I've invented a technology that we're calling "Folder" around the office. With it, we can create complex trees of digitally organized music, video, and even ebooks. The major advantage here is that you can use "Folder" to create repositories for all your digital media ranging in specificity from artists down to albums. You can even launch the media directly from your "Folder" viewer with two clicks! We expect the major bugs to be worked out fairly soon, and you might see "Folder" on your computer in the first quarter 2010.

Re:My digital album format

[TheGreenNuke]

I like your idea for the technology you call "Folder". Mind if i expand on that an create what I'll call a "Library"? This "Library" will be a user-defined collection on files portraying the data independent of your "Folder" tree. the User will be able to group and flatten the tree however they desire by aggregating multiple physical locations into a single view. If you can get your "Folder" technology together in time I'd like to go for an official release in late October 2009 for my "Library" technology.

Leaked CMX details!

[Jugalator]

The music track will use the Ogg Vorbis format, included videos using Ogg Theora, liner notes and lyrics being XML formatted with various included XSLT stylesheets for 10 different attractive layouts as chosen by the artists, as opposed to the music label! The CMX sales will be supported by donations and revenue reaped from immense sales of concert tickets, thanks to naked girls performing in the pauses as they serve Ubuntu Cola!

Re:A few predictions

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, to a music industry exec, your post looks something like this:

"Blah, blah, geeky whinging, blah blah, yada yada Mandatory 30+ Second Anti-Piracy Video kids these days.... iTunes... foo blah, etc Album.

Branded Experience!

Blah, blah, mumble, blah. foo winge"

They'll definitely fuck this one up.