Bookmarks: Formats

A Christmas tale of formats faded and objects discarded: A Reasoned Account of Seasonal Anthropomorphism and Hoarding:

"What does it mean to be REAL?" asked the CD one day, when they were lying prone, unalphabetized. "Does it mean live performers are pulled off the streets of New York in the 1960s and brought under the wing of an albino with Asperger?"

"Real isn't about how the albums are made or what the royalty advances were," said the LP. "It's a thing that happens when someone experiences you. When someone loves your content for a long, long time, not just as the backdrop of a car commercial, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it happen all at once, like a baby bird hatching out of an egg," the CD asked, "or bit by bit, like torrenting a whole HBO series?"

Thom Yorke on the internets

It's lovely of Thom Yorke to to release a new record, but the format is a little odd.

Bittorrent bundles? That feels no less hipster-friendly embrace of a shall-we-say-specialised technology than Cassette Store Day.

This was supposed to be the year that BitTorrent Bundles went mainstream, but - although there's some interesting things going on there - the platform still feels very much like a small pool, albeit one that now has a killer whale languishing there. The Yorke album is probably the one chance Bundles has to break through and become a mass product, although there's two challenges here.

The first is whether enough people care about Yorke's solo work to go to the trouble of installing the software and getting past their nerves about things they may have heard about torrenting. It's not entirely clear that Yorke has that heft.

Secondly, even if people do embrace the idea of torrents-you-pay-for, it's going to always be a hard sell to the major labels, who might not unreasonably think that encouraging the take-up and normalisation of torrenting might encourage experimentation beyond the licenced part of the service. Viewed from Sony HQ, selling records through Bittorrent might seem a bit like suggesting that drug dealers also carry aspirin and Calpol - you can see the advantages, but the risks might outweigh them.

Formatwatch: Bono busy inventing something else nobody wants

You've got to hand it to Bono - just days after not realising nobody wanted his rump-reeking new record, even for free, he's coming up with another thing that people are neither seeking, nor requiring:

In a new Time magazine article, the singer has detailed the group's plans to help combat the illegal downloading of artists' music by creating a new file format which cannot be copied.

Unless there's some magic way it doesn't need to pass audio to an output, let me stop you right there Bono and say it doesn't work.

But do carry on.

The aim of the top secret project is to tempt fans to purchase full albums, not just individual tracks, once more so new material will once again become profitable for artists who aren't big on touring.

The problem here, Bono, is that 'bundling stuff into albums' is a thing that was convenient for labels and artists. It wasn't, ever, a thing that happened because music fans went to bed wishing that when they bought six songs they liked, they could get another four tracks they didn't like, and would never play.

Apple have already tried to resurrect the album format once - with the iTunesLP. That was meant to be an "immersive experience" with all sorts of extras which would make buying a bundle attractive again.

Nobody seems to have released one since last November's Justin Timberlake 20/20 Experience.

But, still, good luck, Bono.

AMP decides nobody has time for a three minute single

You hate radio stations fading out songs too soon? You might want to steer clear of Calgary's AMP radio, which has hit on the idea of paying people to edit tracks down to two minutes.

Wait, what? Why?

Steve Jones, VP of programming for Newcap Radio, which operates close to 100 stations across the country including AMP, said it is a sign that radio is finally willing to get with the times.
[...]
As we look to people’s changing habits and changing attention spans and watch people on their iPod listening to half a song and forwarding on to the next one we sort of came to the conclusion that maybe it was time to rethink why songs are the way they were.

I suppose for listeners it's lucky he watched someone forwarding through their collection; if he'd observed one of those people who find a track they like and leave it on repeat for six or seven turns, Calgarians would be facing an endurance test.

By the way, isn't there something heartbreaking about Jones' desperately trying to be all modern, and talking about iPods? Half expecting him to start mumbling about how radio has to compete with people looking up music on Yahoo! in a minute.

So, the radio people have noticed that people skip through songs and rather than thinking "it's interesting that faced with a large supply of music they themselves have chosen, listeners will rush through their tracks trying to find something that resonates with them and therefore our task is to program music which resonates", concludes that people really love fast-forwarding and try to do that on their behalf. It's like a pub noticing their best customers go to the toilet a lot, and opting to add extra diuretics to their beer.

The rest of the world has pointed that cutting songs down to two minutes is an act of insanity, but for Jones, it's all upside:

Besides, he said, half the song length means double the amount of songs AMP can play in an hour, which also equals more exposure for the musicians, for more musicians. And that, theoretically, translates to more revenue.

“The artists are generally quite receptive to having their songs heard more often by more people,” he said.

Yeah, you're getting your music in front of more people. But unfortunately they're people who are quite happy to listen to a radio that has eviscerated music.

Mr. Jones said the reaction has been “really, really positive. There’s obviously been some negative, for sure, but we’ve been really happy with the feedback we’re getting from listeners.”

Jones is happy with the feedback, but to be fair his attention span is so stunted he only reads as far as "I was listening to your station today and", so has no idea what they're actually saying.

Bookmarks: REM

If you have 20 minutes to spare, discover why REM's Out Of Time turned wasteful CD packaging into a solid piece of legislation. And what happened to the Longbox format. Pitch, the music podcast, explains all

Formatwatch: Pono

Neil Young is unhappy thathis high-quality music is being squished into mp3 format and played back on crappy speakers.

He's got a plan though: He's going to persuade people to buy a new player and a new format. This will be high-quality music. What could go wrong?

Obviously, if you're punting a high-quality music player, it's going to have to be a high-end product all the way through. So this player, Pono, is going to be a thing of great beauty, right?

Um... okay, maybe they're starting with a Fisher Price version for toddlers to catch them young, yeah?

Young doesn't seem to have any understanding of how people are listening to music now - streaming it from the cloud, using their phones - which is why the obvious questions, like 'what makes you think people are suddenly going to buy a standalone music player like it's 2002 all over again?' haven't derailed the process of bringing this product to market.

More to the point, Young's motivation is misplaced:

For quite some time now, Young has lamented the decline of music during the digital age. It’s not pirating that’s the culprit. It’s the MP3, a format that degrades the quality of the music we hear. Speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference earlier this year (watch here), Young complained that the MP3 can’t “transfer the depth of the art.” “My goal,” he continued, “is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years.”

Trouble is, hardly anyone has ever listened to music in high quality. Sure, a few people spent thousands on top-end hi-fi systems and treated playing vinyl as a sacrement.

But most people who played Cosby, Stills, Nash And Young records would have done so on a wobbly turntable, with a needle that should have been replaced at some point in the past. Lucky copies of the disc might have got a quick wipe-over with an EMITECH cloth, but most would have just been defluffed by a rub on a jumper sleeve. Once sent on its bouncy, crackly way, the music would have been heard through a built-in tinny speaker, or a couple of wall speakers located not to create a perfect diamond of sound, but to avoid having to move the fish bowl and to make use of a shelf already on the wall.

Beyond that, it would have been stretched cassette tapes turning at strange speeds as batteries faded, or CD players in cars fighting engine and road noise.

Yeah, MP3 and earbuds are a bit crappy. But there has never been a time in the history of rock when people have treated musical fidelity with the respect Young seems to think it deserves.

[Thanks to Michel M]

Warner Brothers introduces a brilliant new service for 1996

Hey - do you have a DVD that you'd like to put on your computer?

Great news: Warner Brothers have invented a brilliant new service for you, that's easy, quick and cheap. Apart from cheap. And the easy bit. It's not exactly quick, either. Public Knowledge explains:

The head of Warner Home Entertainment Group thinks that an easy, safe way to convert movies you already own on DVD to other digital formats is to take your DVDs, find a store that will perform this service, drive to that store, find the clerk who knows how to perform the service, hope that the “DVD conversion machine” is not broken, stand there like a chump while the clerk “safely” converts your movie to a digital file that may only play on studio-approved devices, drive home, and hope everything worked out. Oh, and the good news is that you would only need to pay a reasonable (per-DVD?) price for this pleasure.

That's right, you'll have to go to a professional outlet to have your DVDs ripped. For a small fee, of course.

I think we must tip our hats to Warners, for coming up with a process to digitise a DVD that actually is more complex than obtaining the thing physically.

Tweetback: Minidiscs

In response to yesterday's piece on the end of portable minidiscs, @theealex responded:

i still use my MD recorder very regularly - it's essential for field recording

If I were you, Alex, I'd try and grab a spare. (Or a machine that uses flash memory?)

This does remind me of a time, towards the end of the last decade, when I was doing a thing for a UK commercial radio station which meant lots of mutual-interviewing with other stations around Europe. We arrived in Prague, at a voluntary, part-time station, and settled down to do the recording.

The volunteer looked a bit embarrassed as he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a minidisc recorder - "I'm sorry, this must seem a really basic, outdated way of doing things" he mumbled.

Which made it awkward for us, as we then had to drag out an antediluvian compact cassette Marantz recorder, which was twice the size of a pulpit Bible and three times as heavy. Our Czech friend was nice enough to try and hide his disappointment.

Portable minidisc permanently ejected

Missed this a couple of weeks back: Sony have killed the MiniDisc walkman.

I do have, somewhere, my entire minidisc collection - which was the covermount that Q magazine gave away back when the format first launched. I don't think there was anything on it - I seem to recall that there was a Wonka-style golden ticket thing going on whereby you were supposed to take the disc to a shop that sold the players, pop it in, and you might win a player of your own. And, on the plus side, you'd already have a blank Minidisc to record the Top 40 onto. I really must get down to a minidisc player shop some day.

The format will continue to be supported for professionals and hifi separates, so it's not quite the end. And it has outlasted Digital Compact Cassettes by fifteen years already, so it's not all bad news.

Unwanted format: The Playbutton

A few years back, there was a brief vogue for chunky little plastic boxes which, when you hit a button, would play a song. I've got vague memories of them being offered in McDonalds; certainly, they were considered to be kiddies' toys.

Somewhat surprised, then, to see the idea being resurrected by a company pushing something called PlayButton:

The Playbutton is a digital music album in the form of a badge, providing album artwork that you can wear. Pin it to your lapel, plug in a pair of headphones and you can walk down the street displaying your musical taste as you listen.

Now, you could say that's perhaps a bit of a curious idea as a gimmick; knock a few of these out as part of a marketing campaign and it'd be a bit of a laugh, right?

The truth, though, is that they're thinking of it as an actual format. To sit alongside CDs:

"It's a small object, perfect and immediate, that you can hold in your hand," says Nick Dangerfield, founder of the New York-based Playbutton company.

Mr Dangerfield says he came up with the format in response to a widespread feeling that people were "tired with CDs", but finding digital music downloads "not entirely satisfying".

"I thought about giving a new use to digital files by putting them in a dedicated player. It's an iconic form that gives you the chance to show your affiliation," he says.

People aren't "tired of CDs", though, are they? They're buying downloads because they're more convenient. You don't see people in HMV... well, you don't see people in HMV at all, but if you did, they're not saying "I'd really buy a record, but these circles of plastic are so derivative. If only there was some ugly badge thing I could buy instead."

Seriously, the idea that it's somehow going to be attractive to buy music in a format where the music can't be transferred to another player, which can only play the ten tracks over and over again and - oh yes - you can't shuffle the order of the tunes:

Mr Dangerfield thinks the sequencing of an album is about "surrendering control to the artist" and that something important is lost when we have the power to rearrange its track listing.

Yes. The power to not have to listen to rubbishy filler that has been dolloped on the record in order to stretch an ep-worth of idea into a lp-worth of a sale.

So, this latter day eight track should at least have the benefit of being cheap, right?

Mr Dangerfield thinks the ideal price would be $15 (£10) if bands sold them at their gigs, but the price could be up to double that, "depending on the type of release and sales channel".

"It's up to the artist to decide how much they want to charge," he says.

Isn't that pricing the Playbutton too high? Mr Dangerfield thinks not.

"If you say to people, 'It's an MP3 player and it's $25,' they say it's cheap," he says. "But if you say, 'It's an MP3 player and it's already got a good record inside,' they think it's expensive."

To be honest, I don't believe that anyone would say "$25 for a 256mb mp3 player? That sounds like a bargain", and it's not much of an advert for your product to say that as soon as anyone puts music on the thing, its perceived value drops like a stone.

Surely music bullets must be on the cards for 2011?

Format madness: The Music Tee

Exciting news arrives from the people who look after Daisy Dares You:

Daisy Dares You is set to launch a brand new product in the UK

A brand new product? Could it be, at long last, the mayonnaise-filled sausage has become a reality?

Daisy Dares You is set to launch a brand new product in the UK - The Music Tee - next week at Selfridges.

The Music Tee? I'm trying to imagine what this could be - after all, as it's a new product, it won't just be a band t-shirt, will it?

Originally sold in the US, it's a new platform where artists can release a t-shirt styled with their album artwork and their album at the same time.

So it's a t-shirt and CD pack. That's not really a new product, is it? And it certainly isn't a platform.

In fact, you used to quite often get t-shirts free with records, until the BPI changed the rules after World In Action reported people coming in, buying a Rod Stewart record, taking the t-shirt and leaving the disc on the counter. So there's quite a long history of rubbish records having their sales inflated by being packaged with a t-shirt.

Artists who have launched their album in this way include Mos Def, Amanda Blank & The Plasticines.

T-shirts with band names on. What will they think of next?

This is just the warm-up, though, as there's a full press release, too:

Coveted by US music fans and fashionistas alike, The Music Tee is set to cause a frenzy with its much anticipated UK launch on June 9th 2010.

I suspect neither claim there is true.

It offers music in a new format, while simultaneously emphasizing “album art” as an emotionally compelling part of the experience.

You know, caught up in the guff here is the germ of a well-meaning idea: digital times have reduced record label art to a poky little offering, and finding a way to celebrate the artwork is a good thing. If it wasn't being oversold like this, you might even take them seriously.

Although, as everyone knows, band t-shirts stop being emotionally compelling parts of experiences after about the fourth wash, when they start a downward spiral through 'gardening wear', 'something you give your boyfriend when he stops over to wear in bed', 'handy thing to wipe up whatever that it is all over the work surface' to 'stuffing for repaired teddy bear'.

Uniting the worlds of music and fashion, The Music Tee updates your wardrobe and iPod collection at the same time and with festival season just round the corner is on track to be a big Summer season must-have.

Yes, who would dare go to Glastonbury without a tshirt that you need to carry the CD with you to make sense of what you're wearing.

“The Music Tee has been a phenomenal success in the US by giving artists a new platform to distribute their music. We continue to sign new major labels and content providers each day. For the UK launch we wanted to introduce fresh artists and will be kicking off with The Daisy Dares You Music Tee arriving in June. We are excited about engaging music and fashion fans in the UK while continuing to grow our collection of compelling artists.” comments Jeremy Wineberg, President of The Music Tee.

Still, you can't complain too much - what are we talking about? Fifteen quid to get a tshirt and a record, right? Maybe twenty?

The Daisy Dares You Music Tee will go on sale June 9th at Selfridges and online at www.themusictee.com. Selfridges will also be stocking The Music Tees for The Plastiscines, Devendra Banhart, Monsters of Folk, Perez Hilton and Sliimy. Prices from £55.

FIFTY FIVE QUID? For a tshirt and a record you could get off the torrents for nothing?
From fifty five quid?

This blog post is also available as a pair of socks to allow you to experience the emotional intensity of reading with your toes. Forty pounds to you.

Format madness: The SixPak

The music buying public - and they're still around - are embracing single tracks with a passion. And why wouldn't we? The idea that we no longer have to shell out for complete collections of music regardless of how much we like the padding is one of the sweet joys of the digital era. Even ill-thought-out b-sides can be avoided.

The record labels, of course, don't like it. They've grown rich over the years by dumping a load of snouts-and-trotters into the album mix, bulking up a couple of good tunes into a ten quid album.

Watching them try to find a way to make people buy tracks they neither want nor need is, perhaps, even more heartbreaking than watching the labels attempting to try and rebuild a business distributing circles of plastic in a world without warehouses or shop shelves.

Warner Music Nashville have invented a new format, the SixPak, which they hope will bring back padding, reports Billboard:

In an acknowledgment of growing consumer dissatisfaction with the traditional CD format, for the first time a major label is replacing the typical 10-plus song CD release with two six-song CDs whose release dates are separated by mere months.

A six track album? Isn't that just an EP?

Blake Shelton is the first to have his music released on this brand-new seventy year-old format, and he's excited:

Shelton says industry reaction has been positive and ultimately, its better for his fans. "Fans will get more music than me putting out a new album every two years," he said. "It's a quicker way to get new music to them."

There are two sorts of fans - the very few who would have loved a ten track album anyway, and the other sort, for whom the fact the couple of tracks they want are spread out over two collections, instead of one, will make no difference.

It's not clear why Warners assumes people will buy two records of stuff they don't want instead of simply not buying one.

Format madness: MusicDNA at MIDEM 2010

After a few years in which most of the rubbish new ideas for music formats have been physical, the people who bought you the MP3 are trying to fly the flag for a new format, MusicDNA.

As follow-ups go, Dagfinn Bach has come up with something a bit more Second Coming than Space Oddity:

Speaking at the Midem music conference, Mr Bach said: "We can deliver a file that is extremely searchable and can carry up to 32GB of extra information in the file itself.

"And it will be dynamically updatable so that every time the user is connected, his file will be updated."

But why does all that extra information have to be wedged into the file? If you've got a 32GB iPod, you're going to be a bit screwed if all you can fit on is a single tune. Couldn't you just put a bit of extra data into an ordinary mp3 which could suck down the extra data off the internet, instead of saving it all in the file? Isn't carting all that extra gubbins around heading away from the cloud, instead of towards it?

Given that increasing numbers of people have always-on connections to the end, what possible value could there be in forcing clunky, larger files onto people to carry extra data that could just as easily be looked up off the web anyway?

[T]he MusicDNA files are likely to be more expensive than current music downloads.

Oh. That'd be it, then. Wrap a load of old tut into the music, and whack up the price.

Not that it's about that, you understand:

Mr Brandenburg, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Germany, said: "I think it brings together a number of ideas that have been around for a long time.

"I remember 10 years ago, a lot of people were saying that we need to enrich the user experience, that legal access to music has to give the customers more than just music, and this is certainly one very nice way to do it."

Actually, what people have been saying for 10 years is that legal music must be cheap and convenient. I don't think anyone has ever said "I wish every day the lyrics insert would change every morning", have they?

Format madness: SlotRadio

Flicking through American Airline's SkyMall I came across SanDisk's bemusing SlotRadio being pushed. I can kind-of see the brainstorm which led to idea - how do we sell the idea of mp3 players to people who don't really want to spend time working out how to download music onto the device - but is that even a market segment worth aiming at?

The product is small player into which you stick the SlotRadio cards - each has 1,000 songs on, and are - of necessity - the equivalents of those TimeLife themed box sets, so come in flavours like 'rock', 'country'. And, erm, that's it. You can swap the cards out, but that's it.

Sure, there might be enough people who don't want to piss about making digital mix collections and uploading them to a fiddly little iPod - but how many of those are going to be persuaded to spend a hundred bucks on a fiddly little player instead?

Unwanted formats: CMX, anybody?

Given the way new formats have been launched and failed like flying ants emerging into the daylight inside an aviary, you'd have thought that anyone at a record company meeting who suggested launching yet another mystifyingly-named, undemanded format would find themselves shoving their office gonks and mugs into a binliner rather than being given a budget and small team.

Not so, though, as the majors have cooked up a new, exciting, new, exciting, new, exciting format that will - they believe - stop the decline of album sales:

Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are putting the finishing touches to an album format that will give music fans a computerised version of the sleeve notes that come as standard with a CD, including lyrics and artwork, and videos.

They're calling it CMX. Perhaps to persuade confused grandparents to buy one when the little 'uns have asked for a BMX. Or perhaps because they're hoping it'll be as successful as the MSX computers were back in the 80s.

One senior record label insider said: “Apple at first told us that they were not interested, but now they have decided to do their own, in case ours catches on.

“Ours will be a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a totally brand-new look, with a launch page and all the different options. When you click on it you’re not just going to get the ten tracks, you’re going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products.”

Thank god for that - I would have hated it if it didn't have mobile products.

Is it just me, or does that "senior record label insider" sound like he or she has been to a couple of meetings where someone's stood up and run through a Powerpoint, and everybody has come away really excited but nobody quite understands what it is. "There's this thing with a brand new look and all the different options"? That could be anything, couldn't it?

The main weakness - beside the utter pointlessness of the idea - is that people aren't buying albums online because they can get the tracks they want without having to buy tracks they don't like. It's like the major labels have seen people getting upset at finding flaming brown paper bags of shit left on their doorstep, and decided that people might enjoy it a bit more if, before it was set alight, the shit was put into a gift bag with a ribbon on it.

New format alert: Seed Paper editions

Not, I'm imagining, the sort of format we'd be expecting to be picked up by too many artists, but The Pretenders have announced their new album Break Up The Concrete is going to be the first ever Seed Paper edition album.

Oh, you do so know what a seed paper edition is, surely?

The Pretenders ninth studio album, Break Up The Concrete, will have a limited run of ecologically-friendly packaging with handmade seed paper starting on the album's release date of October 7. This paper can be planted and, with care, may sprout in 1 to 4 weeks. The paper used on this plantable run, and the paper for subsequent non-plantable runs of the CD and vinyl configuration, has all been certified by the FSC, an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world's forests.

You'll note that there's no actual explanation of what the seeds might be when they sprout - it could be Japanese knotweed. Or possibly the sort of plants which get the local constabulary interested. I'm hoping they'll be beets. Nice to have some beets late in the season.

New format alert: slotMusic

You've got to admire the major labels - faced with a decline in physical product sales, they conclude that the problem is not that people don't want physical product, it's just they want a slightly different shape of physical product.

The latest format, then, to answer this imagined hunger, is slotMusic. This is, effectively, a MicroSD card that someone has already recorded some music on for you. The labels are delighted, hailing "at last: a format that still needs to shipped round the planet, but working with fewer devices than the CD while being much, much, easier to lose."

The official website is excited:

Music, Retail and Tech Leaders to Offer "slotMusic™": High Quality, DRM-Free MP3 Music on microSD™ Cards.

These leaders have issued their launch press release only as a PDF - I'm assuming as a joke; choosing a clumsy, needs-intervention-and-plug-ins format for something that they could have just simply coded up to let people read directly in their browser must be a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for the format, right?

These things are expected to turn up - briefly - on the shelves of Best Buy and WalMart until the challenge of making a microsized product a comfortable browse and trying to persuade people to buy into what I think is the 19th new format since yesterday teatime (BlueRay Audio, anyone?) leads to a quick loss-cutting.

One thing in the defence of the industry: DRM MP3s. The lack of DRM is to be welcomed (gradually learning) but since they're delivering these tracks on a physical format, couldn't they have offered them in higher quality?

Brett Anderson: The Wilderness Years

Brett Anderson has got a new album due later this year, called Wilderness. It's actually going to be available on the torrents far in advance of the official release, though, as everyone who goes to see him play London next month will be given the tracks on a USB drive.

Perhaps the title Wilderness has been inspired by the reaction to last year's self-titled debut?

Although we thought it was pretty good, it never really attracted the attention is deserved. Judge for yourself. This is the single, Love Is Dead:

New format alert: Blu-Ray Audio

Although all attempts to try and interest the public in DVD-Audio came to nothing, that hasn't stopped Norway's 2L pushing ahead with Blu Ray Audio. They're releasing a classical album in the format, claiming a world first. And, we suspect, pretty much a last as well.

This week's new format

Just in case the one-track CD, or USB sticks, or digital vinyl singles wasn't quite enough choice, Sony-BMG are throwing their wait behind the ringle.

Yes, the ringle. A CD with two music tracks and a ringtone.

A ringtone. Shouldn't that just be a giveaway extra rather than the focus of the disc?