Music format wars drawing near, MP3′s change their DNA

Posted on 26 January 2010 by


Image courtesy of CNET

MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) has been the music standard for online music and downloads for almost 20 years. In the late 90′s MP3′s took off with the Napster and Winamp revolution. Finally after all this time the people behind MP3′s came out with a new standard called MusicDNA. This new format is built on the original MP3 format, but now comes with the ability to hold an amazing amount of metadata information. Some of the new features allow you to add Lyrics, Artwork and Blog info. This new searchable format can hold up to 32GB of additional data within a single file. As storage grows rapidly in phones, MP3, and Portable Media Players, you will soon be able to continuously update the data and keep it all wrapped up by single song or album.

A few labels have already jumped on board to the new format, while other large labels have put their stock into the CMX format which is designed to package complete albums online. Apple refused both the CMX and MusicDNA formats and released their own standard for iTunes 9 called iTunes LP or codename “Cocktail.” The new Apple standard creates a page within iTunes for each album offering this feature. Since iTunes now dominates the music and most of the hardware market with their iPod, one or a few of the standards most likely wont make it to see the next year. The audio format wars are taking over where the video wars left off, we’ll see which comes out the victor.

Via Crave

This post was written by:

- who has written 180 posts on Gear Diary.

I have been a tech fanatic and gadget guru ever since I can remember. I started building computers at the age of 13 and have not stopped since. I now work as a Systems Administrator for Deluxe Checks and as a Network and Communications Specialist for the Army. I'm an avid fan of Android OS and spend most of my time breaking mobile phones and trying to get my hands on whatever gadgets hit the market. Hit me up on twitter as @techvudu

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  • Joel McLaughlin

    Hmm….not TOO sure on this. It does make sense to have more metadata in the file, but do we really WANT or NEED the lyrics IN the music file? Do we NEED 32 GB of data in the song file?? DO we CARE about Liner notes anymore? I sure as HECK don’t. I am quite happy with MP3 and will continue to prefer that or Ogg Vorbis for the foreseeable future.

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  • Christopher Gavula

    Wasn’t AAC actually the successor to MP3? I know it’s been a quiet transition, but with Apple dominating the online sales market isn’t this kind of a de facto shift that’s already occurred? Doesn’t that format already store lyrics (or is Apple using separate metafiles to accomplish this? Continuing to play devil’s advocate a bit: I already have a better audio format in AAC (than MP3), and I know that if I put lyrics in my music file on itunes they appear on my iPod already, so why do I need this?

  • Christopher Gavula

    Also Ogg Vorbis is certainly interesting from a technical standpoint, but it really never gained any traction. As a result, I question if it will even have any long-term relevance unless something big changes in the market. Kind of like some audiophiles always maintaining reel-to-reel while cassettes and 8-tracks were popular. Interesting, but not much market impact.

  • Francis Scardino

    I agree with you both. VBR MP3′s are good enough for my taste, maybe standard data such as artist, album and song. Thats all I really need in my music, no beed to waste space with all the filler info. Although I may say different in the future, for now I now need all the data integration.

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