MusicDNA – The Future of Music?
The creators of the MP3 have devised a new format
The Record gave way to the cassette tape in the 80’s, which in turn was superceded by the CD. Music formats then took a decidedly wrong turn with the mini disc, before finally settling on the MP3, which has changed forever the way in which we obtain tracks and enjoy our favourite artists.
The next great step, according to the very people who first developed the MP3, is a move towards live and continually updated content in our music files.
At the Midem music conference in Cannes, a new music file format was revealed by Norwegian developer Dagfinn Bach, who led a number of pilot projects in MP3 production in the early 90’s.
The new format has been christened MusicDNA, and has been designed to reintroduce a level of interaction with music, harking back to the days of physical albums with lyrics and album art. Bach announced that the file will be able to carry up to 32GB of extra data.
Speaking to Reuters, a spokesperson for the Norwegian company, CEO of Bach Stefan Kohlmeyer said:
“What we are bringing back to the end user is the entire emotional experience of music. We think it got lost in the transition to the digital era.
“We think a beautiful piece of audio has been reduced to a number code. We want to enrich it again.”
The audio compression technique employed in the creation of a MusicDNA file is similar to that involved in the creation of MPEG-3, but includes an XML file. In effect, this means that the new file will be tied to live content such as Twitter streams or MySpace updates, lyrics, photos and tour dates – anything the record company decides to include:
“We bundle all the audio data and business intelligence in one file. The data can be automatically updated whenever you are online. You could even sell it for double the price of an ordinary MP3. If content creators make an effort to put a lot of exclusive content in to it, you could definitely charge a higher premium.”
The whole concept is designed to make legal downloads more attractive. Pirated versions of the file will apparently be unable to link to the extra content, and the developers are confident that this new brand of bonus content will encourage music lovers to fork out extra cash for the privilege of connection.
At present, the largest record labels have been slow to hop on board the MusicDNA idea train, but British company, Beggars Group (whose labels include Rough Trade Records and Matador Records) has taken the leap.
The artists signed to this group include indie golden-boys-of-the-moment Vampire Weekend and a host of other artists from Gary Numan to The White Stripes via Adele, Jarvis Cocker and The Strokes.
Fans of the illustrious list of bands on the Beggars Group’s books will be able to sample these new MusicDNA files from the end of the summer, with the first Beta tests running in the spring of 2010.
Neat idea indeed.
But if the music companies think this is a way back to fortune by charging the public a premium, then this will be a very sad, and dead, little duck.
Look at history (as you so nicely elaborated at the beginning of the article). Shellac, bakelite, then vinyl record started the ball rolling. Cassette was slow to get going, but did so through some improvements in technology (being able to get better quality out of the tapes), and being pretty cheap to produce in comparison to vinyl.
CD was successful as both a storage medium and audio medium, but the quality was vastly superior to cassette (and didn’t get chewed up in the player’s mechanisms).
One little blip that has happened is that cassette inevitably has died a death, but vinyl hasn’t. Simple reason is this – quality.
To an audiophile, if you’ve got reasonably expensive kit, vinyl will blow the socks off of CD as the range involved is far superior (but not in all cases, it has to be said). Yes, you do have to really look after the vinly and get a good cleaner, but that’s hardly a consideration to an audiophile.
I always frowned at this line of thinking, until I invested in some decent equipment last year. I can confidently say that my £1500 CD player is amazing, but compared to my £500 turntable, the difference can be astonishing at times.
OK, I digress a little, but what is apparent is this. If you like music, you’re either an audiophile or not. If you are, then you can happily get/download excellent lossless formats that do the duty for you. If you aren’t, then any decent recording will do. Either way, I can’t see what this really offers over and above what is already easily available.
Also, if you’re a fan of the particular artist/genre/label, well, there’s the internet and fan sites galore.
Bearing all this in mind, I think it’s a neat idea, with nothing really new to offer, and if the major labels get hold of it, it will die. End of.