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U2 and Apple Collaborate On 'Non-Piratable, Interactive Format For Music'
Squiff writes U2 and Apple are apparently collaborating on a new, "interactive format for music," due to launch in "about 18 months." (A direct interview is available at Time, but paywalled.) Bono said the new tech "can't be pirated" and will re-imagine the role of album artwork. Marco Arment has some suitably skeptical commentary: "Full albums are as interesting to most people today as magazines. Single songs and single articles killed their respective larger containers. ... This alleged new format will cost a fortune to produce: people have to take the photos, design the interactions, build the animations, and make the deals with Apple. Bono’s talking point about helping smaller bands is ridiculous ... There's nothing Apple or Bono can do to make people care enough about glorified liner notes. People care about music and convenience, period. As for “music that can’t be pirated”, I ask again, what decade is this? That ship has not only sailed long ago, but has circled the world hundreds of times, sunk, been dragged up, turned into a tourist attraction, went out of business, and been gutted and retrofitted as a more profitable oil tanker."
Why would Apple -- go back to pushing the full album when they pushed for single song downloads over a decade ago or why would they push for DRM when they encouraged the music industry to get rid of it.
(And before anyone says they were forced to get rid of DRM by the competition, check when Jobs published "Thoughts on Music" and when the other stores started selling DRM free music.)
Bono is rich and famous and a leader of his music/concert/marketing industry, and for many people, that's what counts. Whether or not his new digital music format can or cannot be pirated is something that remains to be seen, and is so far away in the future, that you can ignore the rest of his words that the media is propagating today. (And history, regarding piracy in a technical sense, is not on Bono's side. I'll bet against Sir Bono).
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
How exactly is this supposed to make the end user feel good about either U2 or Apple?
Both are disconnected from real life. You get that rich and you start believing your own marketing teams blather. There seems to be this idea that "Real" musicans are hurt by piracy. It's not even remotely true... most real musicians can't get a record deal or a show because Bands like U2 have the industry locked up. They are part of huge machine that produced devices that could play their music for them (CDs) then locked that format up in such a way that no regular musician could ever afford to produce one. The one album I was involved in back in the 90s cost $20,000 to finish. We got 600 copies and sold them all making a little over $6k back. That market only worked for huge bands like U2. And local bars don't have live music anymore because local bands aren't allowed on the radio. Bands like U2 pay to have their music played, which gets the public accustom to those songs even if they would have like the local bands better... So now the bars playing a CD they had to pay for AND pay royalties back to the RIAA. Often the live band would have played for FREE! But still can't get a gig.
Now... granted, my Band at the time was DeathMetal. So yea, our lack of gigs had a lot to do with our choice of styles. But this is true of pretty much all live music. I've been in dozens of bands since, from Blues to Bluegrass. It doesn't matter. It's a club and the doors are closed. But, unfortunately for them, they've made it far too easy to consume their product. Now people don't even want to pay for it!
The real solution? You can't pirate a live show. Go do some gigs U2.
With Bob Dylan, you really do need notes to understand what words he is actually saying.
Now as far as what he means, well it's all gibberish.
Bob is a marketing genius. He is a horrible musician and singer and cannot write a song that's worth a damn.
So, what does someone with no talent do and make it big?
Write meaningless shit, "sing" it to people with drug addled brains (the entire Baby Boom generation) and then they can act all superior that they "get it" and the profoundness of the lyrics. So, everyone not willing to say that the Emperor has no talent because then "you don't get it and are uncool", go out and buy his albums making him obscenely wealthy and getting Rolling Stone magazine to make him the #1 artist of all time or some such nonsense.
At least that boy band - The Beatles - were pretty good musicians.
Once Amazon started selling MP3s, I jumped ship from iTunes and never looked back. I imagine even if there was no court order mandating they remove DRM they would have for competitive reasons anyway. Apple may have market power, but not enough to kill the MP3 format I reckon, and it is support for this format that made for a time music purchased from Amazon far better for the iPod than music purchased from iTunes from a consumer standpoint.
Not only are they looking to become "rent seekers" the amount they feel entitled to has increases drastically year after year.
Not that I am a fan of his, but Elvis has net worth of $300MM. Not bad for a guy who's been dead for some time.
He also has 91 albums that received Gold, Platinum or Diamond award status so he sold a LOT of albums.
Now lets pick on a "modern artist", Jay-Z has 15 platinum albums, and a net worth of $560MM.
Brittany Spears biggest worry in life is how many ferrari's her boyfriends need.
When "artists" start living in the real world like the rest of us, i might consider supporting them.
I really do want digital albums, complete with very high resolution art, full lyrics, liner notes, and extras.
I'd actually like to have the ability to buy the "full album" that would include video files of each music video from the album, "B" sides from old 45 releases of songs from the album, backstage videos, interviews with the artist, whatever.
The old album covers from the 70's, the ones that were supposed to be on large vinyl record jackets... I want to be able to put those up on a large flatscreen TV while the album is playing. Preferably not just a scan from a CD printing, but the original image scanned in high resolution. I'd like to be able to see all the details in Hipgnosis images like the jacket art to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or Wish You Were Here. (Hmm, someone made an animated GIF for that last one... heck, I'd like it both ways in the digital album, original and new animated version.)
Of course, I want this all using open file formats (FLAC, JPEG, HTML). But since nobody else got around to doing this, Apple is doing it first, and of course with Apple it will be proprietary, opaque, and likely patented somehow for maximum lockin.
I don't think this will revolutionize music, but it really is something I want.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely