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Apple Working with U2 on New Music Format to Boost Digital Music Sales
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As a few others have mentioned, I think it's going to be an attempt to make the experience more immersive, not necessarily improved audio quality (although it would be nice if it at least included that as well).
These guys are from the vinyl era and can recall putting the new album on your turntable and listening to it while looking at the album cover and liner notes. I believe they want to try to recreate this type of feeling and experience with today's technology. However, you're not forced to sit in the room with your new album like you were then (turntables are not portable, you didn't have one in your car, you don't take one with you on your morning run) so I'm not sure how well this will work. I applaud the goal of trying to forge a deeper connection with the music and artists, I'm just not sure how many people will actually be interested.
Most people today are more casually listening to music, doing something else while listening in the background. They're online or exercising or working or a hundred other things that need to get done. This is why audio quality is not really being requested by the masses, because it's good enough for them.
We shall see.
These guys are from the vinyl era and can recall putting the new album on your turntable and listening to it while looking at the album cover and liner notes. I believe they want to try to recreate this type of feeling and experience with today's technology. However, you're not forced to sit in the room with your new album like you were then (turntables are not portable, you didn't have one in your car, you don't take one with you on your morning run) so I'm not sure how well this will work. I applaud the goal of trying to forge a deeper connection with the music and artists, I'm just not sure how many people will actually be interested.
Most people today are more casually listening to music, doing something else while listening in the background. They're online or exercising or working or a hundred other things that need to get done. This is why audio quality is not really being requested by the masses, because it's good enough for them.
We shall see.
Reminded me of this joke:
"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work."
-Mitch Hedberg
That's a lot of money for two guys and something they arguably could have done just as well themselves.
I think you're right about your big home audio comment. iTunes going lossless in some capacity would be nice and please some people, but that's basically niche territory.
If there's truth to this, I can only see it referring to a couple things. A) some new way of experiencing music, like an expanded multimedia iTunes LP (not that that did spectacularly well), or more likely B) more of a step change in quality of experience stretching back to recording technology, for example 5.1 audio and a multi-driver EarPod with every iPhone/iPod.
There's an old joke...
Two redneck, hick hayseeds from America who have never been outside the US decide to go to Paris for a vacation. They're very hungry when they get off the plane so the go to a restaurant. The waiter hands them menus that are all in French. Not speaking the language, they're not sure what to order. So they decide to listen in on the guy sitting at the next table who says to the waiter "Un verre d'eau."
So, when the waiter comes over to their table, they both say "Un verre d'eau." A few minutes later, the waiter delivers two glasses. The hayseeds drink the contents and say "Gee, if I didn't know it was un verre d'eau, I'd say it was a glass of water."
The moral of the story is that, empty content isn't suddenly going to be fantastic content simply because you make it sound fancy and people with normal hearing listening to music in their cars or on crappy Beat headphones aren't going to be able to tell the difference.
Two redneck, hick hayseeds from America who have never been outside the US decide to go to Paris for a vacation. They're very hungry when they get off the plane so the go to a restaurant. The waiter hands them menus that are all in French. Not speaking the language, they're not sure what to order. So they decide to listen in on the guy sitting at the next table who says to the waiter "Un verre d'eau."
So, when the waiter comes over to their table, they both say "Un verre d'eau." A few minutes later, the waiter delivers two glasses. The hayseeds drink the contents and say "Gee, if I didn't know it was un verre d'eau, I'd say it was a glass of water."
The moral of the story is that, empty content isn't suddenly going to be fantastic content simply because you make it sound fancy and people with normal hearing listening to music in their cars or on crappy Beat headphones aren't going to be able to tell the difference.
That's I think for Billboard Hot 100 signles, and I they needed to do that because it was originally formatted at 25% sales, 75% radio (as in AM / FM) play. I think they tweaked it since those rules are from back in the day when Radio was THE WAY to push a single.
As for albums, it's always been pure physical album sales 100%. With iTunes debut they started counting full album downloads as sales too. I don't know how they adjusted it after Gaga's album, I think it now has certain rules of maximum percentage discount or something like that, beyond which it wouldn't count as sale.
For those curious, NONE of U2 album downloads on iTunes counted
While you are technically correct, the reality is that you will be very hard pressed to actually hear or find a difference between the current iTunesPlus quality and ALAC/FLAC.
I can understand that enthusiasts still want ALAC/FLAC albums to get the full CD audio quality and yes, this should be an option, however I am not sure how large the market for that would really be. I think most people would just stream from spotify or wherever to discover new music or get some background noise in their ear plugs and if they really love an album, then the audiophile and die-hard fans just buy the vinyl or CD instead to actually have the album at the best available quality with all the artwork and booklet and stuff.
And please don't even get started about "ultra hd" format ******** or 24/196 pono neil young ********...
I could only imagine this new "format" is supposed to give more options than attaching a sorry PDF as a "digital booklet" but even then, no idea if enough people would care about that and those few who do care would still buy vinyl or CDs just because.
Tax Dodgers
Bono the eejit is also giving hints and tips on how to avoid tax !
And why does Tim Cook think it is cool to hang around with these old timers !
Bono the eejit is also giving hints and tips on how to avoid tax !
And why does Tim Cook think it is cool to hang around with these old timers !
They were discussing the U2 deal on Sydney 702 radio tonight and someone made the excellent point that, what if instead of spending 100 Million on a U2 album and promotion they spent 1 million each on 100 smaller bands or 250,000 on 400 up and coming artists IN A RANGE OF STYLES TO SUIT ALL TASTES and gave away their albums for free?
Would people be so pissed off then? Imagine Apple giving away 400 free albums through iTunes and supporting independed bands and artists looking for a break? That'd be a PR coup for Apple and iTunes!
Instead the U2 stunt appears to have backfired. U2 don't need more money. And now they're pretening they're about trying to help smaller artists.
This is all evidence that big Apple ain't as cool anymore and is increasingly out of touch.
Would people be so pissed off then? Imagine Apple giving away 400 free albums through iTunes and supporting independed bands and artists looking for a break? That'd be a PR coup for Apple and iTunes!
Instead the U2 stunt appears to have backfired. U2 don't need more money. And now they're pretening they're about trying to help smaller artists.
This is all evidence that big Apple ain't as cool anymore and is increasingly out of touch.
They didn't give U2 $100M...the entire iP6 campaign is worth $100M. Read up. And having 16 of the other albums in the iTunes top 100 when a week and half ago they had none, is NOT a backfire. Again, enough with the U2hate.
Not until the album actually goes on sale in mid-October. FWIW, that's also pushes the official album release date past the Sept 30th deadline for 2015 Grammy nomination eligibility. Assuming anyone cares.
Somewhat related, Sharon Osborne has come out against giving away the album for free with one of her trademarked profanity-laced Twitter tirades. So now I think I'm officially in favor of it.
Speaking of U2, I thought this was a really good read: http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/how-u2-became-the-new-nickelback/
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I keep seeing this suggestion often accompanied by words like "immersive" but I'll offer that, having been around before CDs, I don't remember ever seeing anyone put an album on and then hold the album cover in hand while it played. There was no immersive. There was no huge pull to intently study the covers as the music played. Album covers were just wrappers that were pretty much fully "taken in" in a single look. Look at a heralded album like the Beatles Rubber Soul. There's 2 words on the front and pictures of the 4 of them stretched. Great cover? Yes. Something to study each time the album is played? No. How about the white album? Again, 2 words on the cover of an otherwise plain white cover. Something to immerse in while playing those songs?
Album covers are like the boxes Apple goodies arrive in. Think about the packaging that was wrapped around your latest Mac Computer or iDevice when it arrived. Nice? Attractive? Well done? Informative? Immersive? Let's say "yes" to all of those. So, how many times have you broken out those boxes to immerse in since unwrapping your Apple goodies?
Pile on videos, animation, etc to music albums and all of that can be cool. But it's like the album cover. Once you watch the companion videos that came with- say- the Beatles box set, how many more times do you want to watch them? And, as others have (well) said...
If Apple & U2 could motivate the masses to want to rebuy albums formatted in iTunes Extra Deluxe HD or similar, it adds a burden to the bands that lack the resources to also develop those extras (even the ones that have the resources lack the motivation to utilize iTunes Extras now). It couldn't be about making the best music possible anymore; instead, now it would require visual arts skills too, computer skills, production and so on. It would't be enough to be a great musician; instead, he, she or they had better be good at developing all of this companion material as well… or have the financial resources to pay others to do it for them. Does that bring great music to the market or hinder it?
I suspect the problem is simpler. Prior generations had to rebuy regularly because previous formats wore out. Vinyl albums inevitably scratched. Cassette tapes stretched. Newer digital formats don't wear out. CDs I bought in the 1980's still sounded the same in the early 2000's. Ripped into iTunes in the early 2000's, they still sound the same in 2014 as the first time I played them as CDs in the 1980s. Ten or twenty more years from now, they'll still sound exactly the same. The motivation to rebuy is significantly reduced and the generational motivation to (re)buy some of our parents music is also mostly mitigated.
The solution to the problem is not "immersive" add-ons but bringing NEW, quality music to market that is must have for digital music collections. I haven't bought even one song now in about 6 months. Why? Nothing seems good enough (IMO) to demand inclusion in the favorites in my own library. I've been given iTunes gift cards so I don't even have to reach in my own wallet to buy new music. I just don't hear much that I want to buy. Instead, I just replay the thousands of songs I've accumulated in this digital audio age.
Where is the new, must-have music that is not already in our collections? I downloaded the free U2 album and, IMO, it's got 1-2 songs that might be keepers (another huge problem of modern albums). However, had they not given this away, I don't think the 1-2 would have been worth $1.29 each to own (IMO). Bring the great music to market and people will buy.
But even there, there's another "problem". When I do want to buy some new music, the used CD market makes the exact same quality available for a fraction of the cost desired for a new CD. Instead of paying $9.99 or more on iTunes for 256K AAC, get the same album at higher quality for a dollar or three, rip it at up to lossless and it's going to sound just as good 25 years from now.
Looking at it from a lot of angles, I don't think there is a "good old days" (get people to buy again and again)-type solution to this particular problem other than musicians cranking out a high volume of "must have" new music… and even there, the used CD market will dilute the "one CD per customer" revenue & profitability of those "good old days" unless CDs are terminated and some kind of stringent DRM solution is put in place so that it would basically kill the used market and significantly complicate the piracy (and I'm not advocating DRM or piracy at all).
Else, I think select solutions is something like what U2 just did- get a company like Apple to subsidize the album and give it away and/or make the (band's) money by touring.
Will higher quality, lossless releases yield some revenue? Probably from those who think they can hear a difference. But that happens once. And then the best possible quality of music is in the wild to sound as good as it can possibly sound for as long as we have technology that can play it.
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Higher quality / lossless would be great. At least 44.1k 16b, but 24bit and higher kHz would be cool. Most people produce music at 24bit.
I would also like better implementation of CD artwork and such- perhaps (full) album artwork / notes / production credits and such imbedded in a track as metadata? Would be great, as most digital albums don't come with a booklet, and is a major selling point for CD's and Vinyl for me. They should implement it.
I would also like better implementation of CD artwork and such- perhaps (full) album artwork / notes / production credits and such imbedded in a track as metadata? Would be great, as most digital albums don't come with a booklet, and is a major selling point for CD's and Vinyl for me. They should implement it.
And if they did that, people will just say "where is the innovation?"...
Just can't win.
Why not wait to see what they have? I mean they adopted a great compromise in video when they switched to h.264. Think of what streaming video would be without a codec that was small in footprint, high in quality and with vastly improved streaming capabilities then what was prevalent on the web at the time? I doubt the iTunes store would move as much video product if it was .mov files.
Smaller footprint and higher quality made a difference in sales *lets at least SEE what's in store before we tell them they are all wrong and they should just do the boring thing we can predict.
Errr, I seriously doubt that was a 'give away', that was Apple buying in bulk...
It's like your mum buying copies of your book and stashing them in the garage
Apple should have bonded with Neil Young and his Pono Player. But Neil was smart enough to do it on his own.
Somewhat related, Sharon Osborne has come out against giving away the album for free with one of her trademarked profanity-laced Twitter tirades. So now I think I'm officially in favor of it.
The worst person in the industry. Removing musicians from her husbands albums, so they can avoid paying them royalties, trotting her feeble husband out to mumble into a microphone as a cash grab to fans, and the last two OZZY albums (Black Sabbath and OZZY) sold less worldwide than U2's last album did in just the US.
She is a slime bag scum of a "music manager" and has no business commenting on anything in the music realm. F her.
What is missing in the post is that it has a special DRM. Apple doing philanthropy? What a joke..