CNN: "Music's Future: Smaller, Faster, Richer"

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/27/musics.future.ap/index.html' target='_blank'>http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/27/musics.future.ap/index.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Software engineers in Germany who developed the widely used MP3 audio file format have taken the technology to a higher level with a next-generation format that delivers cinema-like multichannel audio."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/story.mtv.player.ap.gif" /><br /><br />This is the first public demo of the new MP3 format with multichannel support. The first part of the story describing environmental effects created while listening to music through headphones is interesting, though I still hold to my belief that MP3 is an unnecessary and ultimately irrelevant audio format.

[Felix Torres]

I still hold to my belief that MP3 is an unnecessary and ultimately irrelevant audio format.

Want to talk international politics? ;-)
You are correct that MP3 is *technically* unnecessary. It is the MS-DOS of digital music; dated, under-performing, yet supported by just about everything. It doesn't do anything that newers products don't do better and cheaper. Its pure legacy tech.
In a world run by techies or by consumers, MP3 would already be history, replaced by one or all of the three newer contenders; wma, aac, or ogg...

In the world we live in, however, MP3 has a bright future.
Huh?
Well, its worth keeping in mind that MP3 specs are produced and owned by a german R&amp;D outfit, are administered by Thomson out of France, and championed by Philips out of the Netherlands.
The two commercial alternatives are AAC; produced by an american company and sold only on american-branded hardware, and wma; produced by an american company and sold on asian hardware.
This is, of course an unacceptable condition to the propoenents of european national champions and we are already seeing the first stirrings of legal action against both MS and Apple over on the left side of the pond.
Remember that euro anti-trust and competitive theory is *not* based on consumer needs or harm but on protecting *competitors*.
So, once the MP3 laggards finally get their act together with a comprehensive package of specs, codecs, software, hardware and DRM, they will be able to demand a share of the pie simply by existing, regardless of whether the market wants their product or not.
They will be the *european* champion competing against the nasty barbaric american monopolists. Given the euro political climate it will be a slamdunk of a legal case.

Think about it; why bother coming out with all these kinds of me-too codecs into a market that is about to become as competitive as a tankful of hungry piranhas?
Because they know they will be awarded a piece of the pie, regardless of the competitiveness the product. Just existing and being euro is enough.

So &lt;shrug> it doesn't matter that MP3 stuff has no technical merit going forward, it still will have to be dealt with; in the courtroom if not the marketplace.

Now, if *you* want to volunteer to be an expert witness at the trials to come... ;-)

[jeffd]

huh who wha? "unnecessary and ultimately irrelevant format" ? in what way? This horribly worded because when taken in context of what it was ment to do, it is so horribly wrong. MP3 was designed to take audio to the online world. And it succeeded %100 changing the face of music distorbution as we know it today. As a multi channel format yes, its pretty useless. We allready have other multi channel formats and they are equially as useless. Untill music starts getting released in more then 2 channels, the only place mp3 multichannel has is for those ripping dvd's to divx. And even then, they are allready using other formats like .ac3


Felix, "under-performing" ? Mp3 is one of, if not the fastest near cd quality performing codecs. mostly in part due to codecs designed to succeed mp3 offering better sound quality.