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Bach Launches Updated MP3 Format
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Bach Technology has rolled out an updated MP3 file format in a bid to combat music piracy. Dubbed "MusicDNA," the new format offers embedded "updatable premium content" like lyrics, videos, news updates, and album artwork. "Using the new technology, music labels and bands will be able to send updates to the music files – with tour dates, interviews or updates to social networking pages – while illegally-downloaded files remain static. ... No major labels have signed up to use MusicDNA so far, but British record company Beggars Group and US label Tommy Boy are both on board. However, the files are likely to be more expensive than MP3 files – according to the BBC – and will have to compete with Apple's iTunes LP, which already provides additional content such as bonus tracks, lyrics and video interviews."
I hope it's an open standard so someone can write a utility to strip all the crap from the "new and improved" mp3 files.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Don't worry. "Updating" MP3 like this will not extend the coverage period of the patents on the original MP3. The patents on MP3 will still expire on schedule, though I can't say I actually care enough to look up when that may be.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I get all the free RIAA downloads I need from the radio! Just like I used to tape the radio, now I sample it. The only internet downloads I need now are indie music, and they WANT me to download their stuff.
If the RIAA didn't have radio they'd be tickled pink to have you smple their wares from the internet, too. Their true enemy isn't "piracy", it's legitimate competetion from the independant artists, who have discovered that the majors are no longer needed for anything except getting your work on the radio.
If you're in St Louis, KSHE plays seven albums every Sunday night, uncut and uninterrupted and have been doing so for decades. I had Ted Nugent's Stranglehold album on cassette a full week before it went on sale, thanks to KSHE.
This new format does solve one interesting problem -- how to extend the patent on MP3, which is set to expire soon. Too bad copyrights aren't as short a length as patents, and a good thing patents don't last as long as copyrights. If they did, technological progress would be as slow as artistic progress is today. Like science and technology, art draws on what has come before.
Free Martian Whores!
Actually, it has everything to do with demand. If the distribution of music collection size works out so that you've covered the majority of the audience at 16GB, and the vast majority of them at 32GB, there's not that much money to be made chasing the ones left over with yet more product lines. Someone will still do it, obviously, which is why e.g. Apple still makes 160GB iPod Classics, but that segment is not exactly the low-hanging fruit.