I was thinking the other day, as I often do (the shower and my car are the best places). This thought was of digital music. I thought about all of the digital music players out there and the one thing they have in common: MP3 format.
So my thought was, why hasn’t there been a new format that is widely accepted? I challenge you to find a digital music player that WILL NOT play MP3 files. Microsoft and Apple are fighting over WMA and AAC formats, yet both have a player (Zune and iPod) that plays MP3. Why not just use that format?
Take out digital rights management (DRM) and what are you stuck with? A compressed music file with a formatted tag (ID3 in the case of MP3s). Those have been around for years, so why reinvent the wheel? Just use MP3.
Anyway, I was also thinking, what features would I like to see in a music player? The iPod is great. What’s missing is what buying a physical CD gives you: a booklet full of artwork and lyrics. Sure, you can manually add more artwork, but I don’t wanna. I want to have artwork for the album, but I also want artwork for each song, like in the booklet. I also want synchronized lyrics so that I can figure out what they’re singing and sing along Karaoke-style if I want. Even better would be if the song file contained separate tracks for each element (drums, guitar, bass, vocals, etc). I could mute the lead vocal track or the annoying backup guy. Plus, I could easily remix songs.
So what are we talking about? Synchronized lyrics, song artwork, and separated sound tracks. Tack on Dolby 5.1/7.1 surround sound and you’ve got something big. The digital music revolution. If every music player manufacturer got behind the same format, the industry would follow. I love CDs, but it’s time for something new.
