An Overview Of Present, Future of Music Technology

prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum magazine is running a feature article on the state of music and current digital formats. They point to an interesting phenomenon in the digital music world that Steve Jobs emphasized as well: for the first time in music history, the next big format was not about better quality (SACD and such) but about better portability (MP3). 'It was only five years ago that the music industry was facing a civil war over the next-generation disc-based music format -- the successor to the wildly successful CD. At that time, hardly anybody doubted that the music would be encoded optically on a round plastic disc the size of a CD.'"

Portability... And security

[KitFox]

People want to take their music everywhere, and get it fast. So they want portability, internet downloads, etc. But the folks with the product want a business model that makes a lot of money, so any way they can enforce anything that complicates copying, porting, or anything else will be on their To Do List.

So I end up wondering... With the business they want, and with self-destructing DVD's [slashdot.org] already a common thing, plus time-limited DRM's, how long until we are reduced to the age of "renting" everything... even that which we purchase fully?

And then, on another front, how long before people start realizing that if people just want to hear the music, Digital-Analog-Digital conversion completely strips DRM... Then how long before some crazy laws come out that make that illegal, and anything that can "Facilitate" such functions illegal... so no computers will have line in anymore, and posession of microphones will result in a still fine and jail term?

Re:Make no mistake

[Zorilla]

In a similar case, I already have seen DVD cases with words along the lines of, "Macrovision protected to ensure quality of the disc". Marketing DRM towards fidelity has already started.

Re:What about cassettes?

[klang]

Many albums are still available on vinyl, cd and cassette ... some even in one or several digitally encoded (reduced) form. (several parallel distribution systems have existed for the last 15-20 years)

Going from vinyl to cd's you had to buy the cd, because you couldn't transfer an album you already had... fine, for The Industry. CD's are not lossless compared with vinyl, it's still a digital format whereas vinyl is basicically analog..

Now, people are encoding their cd collections without the help of anybody and The Industry is not getting a second sale .. no wonder they are pissed.

The way things are going the walkman generation will be moving to iPods or similar. 10.000 songs at 128kbs or 5000 at 256 kbs .. the way harddisk space is going, quality will go up leaving the number of songs at roughly the same spot ..

Is DRM Necessary?

[plasticmillion]

It's interesting that the article parrots conventional wisdom by presenting ubiquitous DRM as inevitable, rather than one possible future. Personally I think that DRM may end up a lot less widespread than most people expect.

The premise that we can't do without DRM is based on a couple of unfounded assumptions. One is that people will always avoid paying if they can. This has already been proven wrong by the success of iTunes Store (and to a lesser extent competiting offering), despite the fact that there are plenty of sources of free music on the internet (especially P2P software like Kazaa and eMule). The second is that DRM actually works; actually there have been convincing arguments [mit.edu] that this will never work, especially considering the fact that a D->A->D conversion will produce very good results (probably as good as 128 bit MP3) and is basically impossible to prevent.

Then consider how much of a turnoff DRM is for customers. I think a good analogy is the early software industry. It used to be that floppy disks were crippled with "copy protection" technology, and a lot of software required the use of a hardware dongle. Nowadays these approaches have gone the way of the dinosaur and software companies tend to rely on much, much lighter weight protection like a simple license code. The reason is that copy protection was more likely to deter well-meaning novice users than hardened hackers, resulting in reduced sales. The software industry eventually realized that the right price points and distribution mechanisms were going to raise their revenues and profits a lot more than these "protections".

To me it seems logical that the music industry will eventually go the same route, even if it means that today's leading players will be dethroned by more forward-looking challengers. They're only clinging to DRM now because they are terrified of cannibalizing their existing revenue streams. This might work for a while but history suggests that they can't hold back the tide of technology forever.

Re:MP3 vs the rest: Is file size really an issue?

[hype7]

I completely agree with your identification of the issues, with the exception that you've left off price. You've applied your own standing to those issues, which is fair enough, but not everyone agrees with you.

I don't mean to be the smelly hairy audiophile (anyway, I'm not) but the 192Kb MP3s that you refer to suck as soon as you're not listening to them on those shitty iPod headphones.

Like many other college students, I've invested a bit in a decent hi-fi (as much as I could afford) that has decent components in it. My mother can pick the difference between MP3s at less than 192kbps and a CD. I have a few demo SACDs and DVD-As (not going to buy many because I can't put them into iTunes) and the difference between these and CDs is unbelievable.

I am willing to pay more for good quality and no DRM. The RIAA is only interested in offering a wide range of poorly-formatted songs (i.e. put on AAC/MP3/WMA, etc) or a very narrow range of well formatted songs (i.e. put on DVD-A or SACD) but all of them, every last one, has DRM. So I'm buying CDs, but less of them, because I'm becoming disillusioned with the whole situation...

So, as someone who is one of their customers and who has spent a lot of money on their products, I'm sick of this situation. I want their product, but I don't want to be assumed to be a criminal. Yes, I'll probably let my sister copy my songs but that's never going to stop. It's always been the case, and always will be, no matter what stupid DRM you put on the product. I'll strip, fucking sue me.

I might sample a few songs online but I go and buy the CD. The quality is better, and it saves the hastle of going through and finding the songs. It's great for discovery but no good for getting a lot of what you want.

Surely these overpaid fuckers at the RIAA can find a business model in there somewhere. They have a product I want, I want to give them money, but I don't want to be told how it is acceptable for me to use their product.

-- james

Re:SACD vs MP3

[abborren]

Which encoder you choose greatly impacts the quality of the resulting MP3s. My favourite general-purpose is LAME [sourceforge.net]. When going for high bitrates i choose BladeEnc [mp3.no].

IMHO around 128 kbps with lame is where it gets diffcult to tell the difference in an ABX test.

I use OGG a lot, too. It is pretty good.

Re:MP3, but improve the quality

[Overzeetop]

MP3pro sucks ass. Plain and simple. How do I know? I tried it. Here's the issue: I can hear MP3 compression artificats clearly to 192kb on most sources, and to 224kb on some of my "favorite" music. Certain Boston sequences are particulary difficult to encode well even at 256kb when played over decent headphones*.

The problem is that even the registered version of an MP3pro converter would max out at 128kB, with 192kB "quality". Nice, but not really "enough". Everyone seems to be racing to the 96-128kb SIZE point, without realizing that it's not really all the great to listen to unless there's a lot of background noise, or the equipment you're playing it on comes in a heat-sealed clamshell. And 64kn in every format I've listened to sounds somewhere between AM and FM radio, with digital artifacting added as a bonus. I'll take 48 or 64 for spoken spoken word, but please don't say you use it for audio unless you are listening to it while mowing the lawn.

I finally gave up on lossy formats and started re-ripping everything in FLAC. Now I can transcode through foobar2000 to whatever the format dujour is, or to a format which will fit in the space I have on my portable player.

* Sony MDR-V6 in my case...quite the bargain IMHO, but get the Beyerdynamic 250/290 replacement pads - they're much more comfortable. See http://www.audioreview.com/PRD_118127_2750crx.aspx [audioreview.com]

The question is whether DRM will be optional

[turnstyle]

I'd say that the big question is whether Microsoft (or the gov't) will start forcing the DRM'd formats -- meaning dropping support for non-DRM'd formats -- kind of like the digital TV "broadcast flag".

If they do, then that could be a big plus for the Open Source OS's.

And if it does wind up a government mandated thing, then would the Open Source OS's be forced into following suit? (ie, will Open Source OS distros have to come from outside the US?)

On the other hand, if the DRM'd formats *aren't* forced on us, then they'll never take over.

Time we stopped calling this "music industry"

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep getting labelled a troll when I post stuff like this, which is why I'm getting a bit disillusioned with Slashdot, but we do need to remember that "the Music Industry" is not the music industry. All over the world people are doing live performances, making little independent recordings on CDs or tape, creating genuinely experimental music. The thing the IEEE et al call the "Music Industry" is the bit that is run by large companies that figure on stock exchanges and so are visible to the media, and which in general is followed by a subset of the 10-30 age group in the developed world.

There is no doubt that it is important in that its activities drive technical developments in certain directions, especially in the electronics and computer industries, but it isn't as important as it thinks it is. Its products are ephemeral and one day it will be of interest only to historians. Anybody who doubts this should look at the history of music; music is no longer driven by competing cathedrals, protestant churches or local rulers. When Bach was a superstar composer, he was part of a musico-industrial complex that no longer exists. Bach survives because he was also a great musician, but most of the composers of that era are completely forgotten. When Mozart was a kid, cathedrals tried to enforce copyright by excommunicating anyone who tried to memorise and reproduce the tunes of their new settings. This business model no longer works very well.

And my point? That many people already may be seriously pissed off with the "Music Industry" but their activities, because they are small scale and local, are under the radar. Just like rock music was, once, when its performers couldn't afford proper instruments. We don't actually know where the next groundswell will come from, but we can be fairly sure that DRM-crippled reproduction equipment and the like will mean that the next new thing will come from left field. Rather than read about "Record execs pay research organisation to talk up their latest revenue protection concept" or whatever, I would like to know more about what might be happening in genuine grassroots music, and whether recording,transmission and reproduction technologies are aiding it, impeding it or are irrelevant.

creating backups of your music data ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What troubles me about this article is that no mention appears to have been made about what happens when an audiophile with an extensive collection of music located ONLY in one place, on a hard disk, loses that hard drive to a hardware failure, and if he / she doesn't have any back-ups? I wonder how informed are the masses which buy new computer systems, or new high-capacity music players, about the role that backups play in their lives. With vinyl, tapes, CDs, and DVDs, music collectors always had the possession of the physical media, but with digital, Internet-based, distribution of music, and eventually movies, this ownership seems, less real, and more ephemeral. This comes from a person
(me), who preaches backups to other people, yet who is too lazy to even perform them himself.

Re:Make no mistake

[rizzo420]

but that's sort of true... they are generally camera copies. also screeners tend to be lower quality as well, so a copy of a screener would be lower quality than what you'd buy in a store. and camera copies are only as good as the camera and the dude holding it.

Re:SACD vs MP3

[Otto]

--r3mix is way deprecated. If you're using the latest LAME, you should be using --alt-preset standard instead of --r3mix. You can use extreme or insane if you want, but it's unlikely you'll be able to ABX any actual differences between those and standard.