MusicDNA To Replace MP3 As Dominant Music Format?

Perhaps the days of MP3’s dominating the world market for music file formats is over. A company called Bach have develop a new format. A format called MusicDNA.

The format is not only just the audio track though, it contains heaps of metadata with such information as artists, artwork, lyrics and even twitter feeds. The developers of the file format claim that with all this extra information bundled in, with any success in the market they can double the price of music downloads. This is certainly a bold claim as many people’s reason for piracy is purely down to the fact that the price of music is ludicrously high as opposed to the dirt cheap albums of yesteryear.

The co-inventor of the file format, Stefan Kohlmeyer stated during the launch, “We bundle all the audio data and business intelligence in one file. The data can be automatically updated wherever you are online”. He went on to say, “You could even sell it for double the price of an ordinary MP3. If content creators make an effort to put a lot of exclusive content into it, you could definitely charge a higher premium”. As far as I can gather, by ‘exclusive content’ he is referring to such features as music videos.

Already, there are a growing number of music labels in the UK signing up for MusicDNA, but it is yet to be seen whether this can make any inroads into clearing major music download sites of their MP3 files.

To me, this seems as though it’s already hit a dead end. Put it this way, how many people would refuse to buy a movie if it didn’t come packed with extra features such as commentary? How many people ever even think about watching the special features?… by my estimations the answer lies somewhere between none, and very few.

Personally, if MP3 is on the way out then there is only one way forward. I pretty much guarantee that given the choice, people would rather pay a premium for a higher quality lossless audio music track, than a premium for a bunch of bundled extras in Music DNA that most will never use?

On the other hand, the majority of the time anyway, the future of music is in the power of music labels, not the consumers so we can only wait and see what the future brings for digital music formats.

Via – BBC