Hey flick, why am I'm thinking this IBM/Sony music thing lays an egg?
Answer: Because it seems to be all about e-commerce hustle, downloading mechanics and copyright security, not about music *fidelity*. (Remember "hi-fi"?) The MP3 train is leaving the station and the big labels aren't on it. Hey, they're not even ready for stereo! But Jack Valenti and his counterparts will be proud that the copyright police have, once again, seized control from muckrakers, pirates and populists. Well, sort of...
As we've recently learned, RNWK's going to provide the front end for the IBM system (formerly known as the "Madison Project"). To some extent, apparently, Xing's MP3 encoding will be employed in this venture (given RNWK's hasty $75 million Xing purchase announcement last week). But Xing's MP3 encoding is controversial. It's indisputably fast (do we really care?), but its algorithms don't necessarily offer the highest resolution. Thus, this shotgun wedding of industry heavyweights may offer genuine..."mediocre-fi".
So a familiar question arises: Does AXC have a contribution to make to MP3 signal integrity/fidelity? By jumping aboard now, we could reclaim the elusive consumer brand franchise that Ray Dolby took with him when he left AXC 30 years ago. And as BCST's Mark Cuban reminds us, MP3 has a streaming problem, at least for the moment. As currently implemented, it just doesn't scale. This means mass MP3 radio is still in the future. Another AXC opportunity?
BAM
P.S. For more on MP3 encoding, Xing and Fraunhofer (where MP3 was born), here are a few recent posts to RNWK.
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