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."

Comments

Expert.

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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.

Re:Expert.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bono is an expert on media formats in the same way that Dr Dre is an expert on frequency response.

Re:Expert.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the thing is, in order for something to be pirated, at least one person has to buy it. So he may actually be on to something here....

Re:Expert.

[afidel]

Um, no, he's much, much less an expert than Dre is. As a respected producer at least Dre has some validity as a good ear, and he can evaluate the results of different parametric curves on tone signature, Bono can claim no such expertise in container formats unless he's gone back and studied CS while the world wasn't watching.

Re:Expert.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether or not his new digital music format can or cannot be pirated is something that remains to be seen

Can you listen to it with your headphones of choice? If so you can connect line out to the line in of any computer and record a very pirate-able wave file. Any distortion will be insignificant compared to what compression adds to it these days.
Even if they start to send the audio encrypted to the headphones I can still place a high quality microphone in them and record the audio. (Assuming that the output from the headphones isn't crap, but then I don't want to listen to the original either.)

You don't have to wait to see anything. It is not possible to prevent piracy. (Unless you shut down all forms of communication, if people can't communicate with each other they can't spread undesired information.)
Even when it comes to concepts like sending an encrypted video stream to the TV to prevent movie piracy it doesn't work since a single person can just open the TV and grab the video data as it is sent to the LCD. (And as a worst case, point a video camera at the screen.)
There is no point at where the prevention method is good enough to make it impractical to break it.
Computer game companies are way ahead when it comes to copy protection and there we clearly see that it only requires one dedicated person that works through the binary to disable to protection, even server connected software have been proven breakable.
The music and movie copy protections do not require even a fraction of the work compared to that and even then it is still not enough.

Challenge accepted!

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Undeletable

[unapersson]

It's a new form of distribution, everyone gets a copy which is undeletable. They make money by charging for a removal tool.

Re:confused

[Jhon]

Because it shows that neither know what they are talking about. If I can HEAR it, I can copy it. And the quality can get pretty damn good depending on how the sound is captured.

Maybe when they build a gizmo that broadcasts the sound directly in to your brain...

Re:confused

[Charliemopps]

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.

Cross between a music album and a video game

[QuietLagoon]

It appears that U2 and Apple are proposing an interactive album format that combines the music of a record album with the interactivity of a video game.

.
Or to phrase it differently, it appears that U2 and Apple are proposing to make music more prominent in video games.

Is Apple going downhill?

[aaaaaaargh!]

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.

The Titanic is UNSINKABLE.

[Weaselmancer]

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.