Article Summary: 'Finding the Music Format of the Future' By Jack Schofield

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 12th April 2007, The Guardian) are:

• Quality, copy protection and the threat of billion-dollar lawsuits are all factors when choosing encoding systems.
• The vast majority of songs on filesharing systems have been in the MP3 file format since Napster propelled the idea of digital music into the mass market in 1999.
• Files encoded in the newer and better AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format could become more popular. because it is now possible for people to share unprotected songs bought from Apple's market-leading iTunes Music Store.
• The market was opened up earlier this month when EMI said it would continue to sell music with DRM (digital rights management) copy protection, but that better-quality files would also be offered without DRM for a small extra charge. (See previous article summary.)
• This should make AAC files more popular to an extent that could even rival MP3's popularity.
• Music stores are free to choose the encoding and the quality.
• iTunes has most of the legal online music market, so most files bought online are and probably will be in the future use AAC encoding.
• Apple was the first company to bring the format to the mass market with the iPod in 2003, but AAC files now play on a growing number of devices. This is an example of companies having to change their products to meet the audience's requirements and desires.
• An example of the audience and market moving forwards is the fact that music stores will use best audio practice prior to encoding files, whereas audio that's played on the radio has had dynamic range compression applied to it, and some radio stations don't apply best audio practice, so a track on iTunes should sound better than it would on the radio. This makes it very unlikely that the audience will go back to 'taping songs off the radio.'
• AAC is heavily patent protected and companies must pay high fees to license the patents.
• An example of conflict between institutions is the fact that most music stores would probably have continued to use MP3 if the music labels had not insisted on copy protection, because MP3 doesn't include DRM.
• The future of Microsoft's WMA would look bleak in a DRM-free world.