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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."
" Bono said the new tech "can't be pirated" "
Since when is Bono qualified to have an opinion on this subject?
He should make songs and not talk about things he hasn't got a clue about.
How exactly is this supposed to make the end user feel good about either U2 or Apple?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
don't they realize when they make statements like "can't be pirated", a whole bunch of people reply with "challenge accepted!" and will go to great lengths to do so?
The only way to make something unpiratable is to have it be a continuous interaction between a client and a server where you control the server.
I guess this music "format" is essentially going to be Apple's answer to Pandora, Spotify, et al.
It's a new form of distribution, everyone gets a copy which is undeletable. They make money by charging for a removal tool.
Or at a minimum he should have a day job.
I'm a U2 fan, I like their music, I saw their last show in Dublin and I was happy to pay handsomely for the pleasure.
But increasingly musicians are looking to become rent seekers. The ought to earn a living like everyone else. Get on the road, Play gigs.
The expectation of a royalties for longer than a lifetime is a symptom entitlement, based solely on 'because we can'. I'm going to rip their music for as long as I can. When I can't, I'll stop going to their shows.
And where does Bono's sense of entitlement come from, he's a fucking northsider.
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Northsider%20(dublin)
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Or to phrase it differently, it appears that U2 and Apple are proposing to make music more prominent in video games.
Why does Apple keep investing themselves in post-peak celebrities?
Dre, Iovine and U2 may be influential but how much currency do they have among future music fans? Is it because the decision makers at Apple are all in their late 40s-to-50s and are merely caught up in the fandom of their youth?
Shouldn't they be forming partnerships with artists with a ton of pull with 20-somethings? Do kids in their 20s even listen to U2, or is it something that 40-something moms crank up in their minivans along with an illicit Marlboro Light on their way to pick up the kids at soccer practice?
If U2 had any hip credibility, it was 30 years ago. Can you imagine Apple rolling out the Macintosh in 1984 with a celebrity lineup of the Everly Brothers and Bill Haley & the Comets?
It's music that can't be heard and Apple figured U2 would be the perfect band to use this new technology.
I have nothing personal against Apple or U2, but if Cook thinks he can keep Apple's overall positive image as a "cool company" (not to speak of rejuvenating it) by collaborating with a pop band whose peak of success was in the late 80s/early 90s, then I can only conclude that Apple has a rough future ahead.
Perhaps I am missing the grand picture here but it's hard for me to imagine anything less innovative and more boring than this U2 bullshit in combination with a wrist watch that looses power after one day.
Ah, hubris! One of my favorite old-timey sins.
You are of course correct. The signal must become analog at some point to make it into your head, and we have had the capability to capture analog signals since the dawn of the television age. You can crack open LCD panels and intercept signals for a more modern high tech version of this concept, of course.
But you are forgetting the other side of the equation. When when someone makes that statement - "THIS CANNOT EVER BE PIRATED" - you are throwing down the gauntlet. And invariably some bored teenager will say "oh really is that so?" and make them eat their words. Usually by the following Saturday. Yes you can do an analog capture but by the time you warm up your soldering gun some kid in the Netherlands will have already got the torrent up.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch a Blu-Ray movie on my Linux box.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Interactive? Music? Apple? That's easy. They're going to make "Music apps" for iPhones and iPads.
But those won't work on the iPod shuffle, the iPod nano and I'm guessing it won't work directly with the future Apple Watch either.
If it's music, I don't want to "interact" with it, I just want to listen to it.
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But, in a world where everyone is selling 256K and 320K tracks, I'd rather get my music in a lossless format and convert down to VBR MP3.
LMAO. AAC is already VBR, at 256k from the iTunes store. So you want a lossless track so that you can convert it to lossy anyway, rather than getting a lossy track in the first place with no extra steps needed. Brilliant.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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
Thsi point is the ignored deal breaker that has killed all other formats that attempted this. If it won't play on any of the following, it's sales are already in decline.
Common MP3 Players
DVD players that play MP3 CD's
Computers Windows, Linux, Apple
Cell phones Android as well as Apple.
Only formats with compatability at a reasonable price will sell in volume.
Unique formats that require a specialised player will have very limited market penetration.
Do I need to list failed formats?
Sony Minidisc with serial copy protection
Microsoft Zune and protected WMA formats
Apple Itunes copy protected format
The Apple format had a reasonable market penetration because they were the first to market with a legal format, but had to drop the protection when other players entered the market at lower prices in more universally playable formats. Apple tried to market the unprotected verson at a higher price, but that was short lived too.
My questions are who is going to produce the compatible players that people will actually buy? Will the player play legacy formats that are not protected? This is important as a new player that won't play existing libraries won't sell much. Will the player import the legacy formats into a protected format? If so, this will cause a backup and archival issue. Will it be compatible with MOST in car infotainment systems?
Many cars have the ability to "Play" MP3's on a USB Thumb drive. How are you going to sell into this market?
Another incompatable format has a high barrier to market entry. Good luck.
The truth shall set you free!
Apple engineers unable to plug Bono's analog hole.