Apple Working with U2 on New Music Format to Boost Digital Music Sales

[MacRumors]

Apple and U2 have a long history of working together, producing a special edition U2 iPod in 2008 and more recently releasing the band's latest album, "Songs of Innocence," for free. According to Time, Apple and U2 reportedly now are collaborating on a new music format that will boost digital music sales.

Details on the music format or the secret project surrounding it were not revealed, but U2's Bono says it will help musicians sell more of their music.

Bono tells TIME he hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music--whole albums as well as individual tracks. The point isn't just to help U2 but less well known artists and others in the industry who can't make money, as U2 does, from live performance. "Songwriters aren't touring people," says Bono. "Cole Porter wouldn't have sold T-shirts. Cole Porter wasn't coming to a stadium near you."

Digital music sales are declining as consumer interest in online streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora grows. According to Nielsen SoundScan data from the first half of 2014, digital album sales fell 15 percent year over year, while digital track sales fell 13 percent. At the same time, streaming music increased 42 percent.

In the U.S., iTunes currently is the market leader for digital music downloads, but Apple is not blind to the steady decline in these digital music sales. The company launched the Pandora-like iTunes Radio along with iOS 7 and recently purchased Beats Music for $3 billion.

Article Link: Apple Working with U2 on New Music Format to Boost Digital Music Sales

 

[saha-med]

BYE BYE beats muppetry

Hello U2 muppetry

 

[Kissaragi]

A new music format? Music is music surely?

*edit* I understand about lossless, mp3 etc. A new file format isn't going to help music sales so I was meaning music in general and what other way can they present music other than being sound.

If they want to deliver music differently then they already have Beats music, just overhaul it and use that.

 

[Santabean2000]

Stop. Just stop. You're digging the hole even deeper...

 

[Lancer]

Want more sales, don't give away millions of copies or their latest album!

 

[Planey28]

BYE BYE beats muppetry

Hello U2 muppetry

How long until Apple buy U2?

 

[bushido]

honestly who cares especially of the younger generation unless you are a audiophile and on top of that U2 of all people like .... lol

Apple was late to the streaming party, mostly because they probably werent willing to pay what the labels were asking for and now they r trying to make a dead beaten horse happen

 

[dannyyankou]

Cue the annoying U2 comments.

As for the new music format, I'm interested.

 

[FlatBot]

How long until Apple buy U2?

I think they already did.

 

[Dilster3k]

I'm sorry, improving the music format is only the very first step in a long road. The Amps / Dacs in our laptops and phones are terrible. And not everyone in the world has the best Hi-Fi headphones in the world, the range and accuracy in the EarPods is not revolutionary either.

 

[DeanL]

Lossless files >

What about giving us the damn lossless files? --'

 

[kemal]

What? A new music format where the music is actually good? I doubt.

Tim will just buy Pono Music and have Neil Young do God knows what.

 

[pwhitehead]

Apple, you're better off giving away free Black Eyed Peas and/or Lady Gaga albums then these old geezers. OMG!

 

[Whimseh]

Can this whole ApplexU2 thing please end?

 

[Matrixfan]

As long as its lossless I'm in, otherwise they can Cook up anything , I'm out. U should be 2!

 

[BornAgainApple]

I'm sure a change is coming but it won't be Apple who brings it, they'll just refine it and take the credit for "thinking different ".

 

[AndyB2007]

New music format? or new DRM/Software that tracks how, when and where you are playing it and how many people are listening, that then charges you accordingly?


Or maybe Apple incorporates a fee into each iPhone/ipod that it then distributes out to select artists, and you can play any of their songs for "free". Heres hoping they don't sign up Justin Bieber as well as U2.

 

[k1121j]

Noooooo!!!!!

OMG... Nooooo i love Apple but geesh lets get with the program here perhaps work with someone who actually sells albums.... Just saying.

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

Apple, you're better off giving away free Black Eyed Peas and/or Lady Gaga albums then these old geezers. OMG!

No they are not.

 

[Oberhorst]

That’s gonna fail for sure. No way this will be successful.

 

[nfl46]

Sigh! Lol. I don't blame U2, though. Their music got published to over 500 million Apple devices, plus they got 100 million. Oh well, Apple made 100 million in a few minutes during iPhone pre-orders.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

A new music format? Music is music surely?

It's all in the details. A print of the Mona Lisa is nothing like seeing the real thing. Music is like that too. A compressed AAC file is deader sounding than an uncompressed AIFF. But AIFF isn't practical when bandwidth and storage is limited. So a new format that is less compressed than AAC but still retains AAC's file size frugality would be a beautiful thing. Personally, I use ALAC right now, a little compressed and somewhat large files, but not as large as AIFF.

That said I don't know how that sells more music b/c the era of big home audio is dead and portables are not going to sound much better even w/ an improved format. The real problem w/ the music industry IMHO is lack of talent. There are a lot of one-song wonders and one decent cut albums out there now, and nothing really new sounding.

 

[RightMACatU]

I just hate it when dropping sales numbers drive new technologies
It just proves that the customer's opinion and desire are worth... where's that emoji

 

[840quadra]

I'm sorry, improving the music format is only the very first step in a long road. The Amps / Dacs in our laptops and phones are terrible. And not everyone in the world has the best Hi-Fi headphones in the world, the range and accuracy in the EarPods is not revolutionary either.

That's because the average Joe (or Jane) can't hear, or detect the difference in quality, nor do they really care.

It only takes a quick look at the best selling headphones to show how little people care about true quality, versus the image (not of the sound obviously) the headphones or stereo components give them.

And honestly the audio output of our iDevices is a lot better than many early iPods that everyone lusted after. There were some exceptions (1st generation Shuffle was quite good), however most sounded best when docked to a quality amp.

 

[Northgrove]

What.

A new music format won't improve quality. Today's formats go well beyond CD quality, well beyond hearing limits in what they support. Now, as for what the hardware and our ears support, that's a completely different question. And the bottleneck.

It's easy as pie to develop formats that handle maximum frequencies up to 96 kHz rather than 44.1 kHz of CD audio. That's why for example AAC already does that.

Today, we even have formats like MPEG4-SLS "Scalable to Lossless". Audio with both a lossy and lossless layer, which can scale depending on bandwidth. And it's pretty tough to beat a flexible format supporting lossless audio.

But maybe they're talking about some random metadata-oriented features here? Music formats with lyrics, lyric timing, separated audio tracks, etc. Problem is: We already have all this too. Modern audio formats have rich and evolved metadata support.