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JupiterResearch analyst blows it: ‘AAC isn’t supported by majority of digital music players’

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 · 12:17 pm · 34 Comments

“Now I’ve had a little while to digest the detail of the Apple / EMI announcement, a couple of additional points come to mind. Firstly the fact that the high quality albums retail for the same price as DRM-ed albums is a really important tactic to offset the bias of digital music purchasing towards individual tracks,” Mark Mulligan blogs for JupiterResearch.

Mulligan, writes, “Secondly, and more controversially, this doesn’t actually do a huge amount to address interoperability with regards to Apple. The DRM free tracks on iTunes are in AAC format, which isn’t supported by the majority of digital music players. Jobs has played a very smart game: AAC is not a closed format, other manufacturers could license it if they so choose, and they are begining to. But currenly they predominately don’t and most of the installed base of players doesn’t support it.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Maximus" for the heads up.]
Mark, you should’ve spent a little while longer digesting. AAC is supported by the vast majority of digital music players. They’re called “iPods.” Look them up, if you’re not familiar with the product line. It’s painfully obvious that most of the installed base of players support AAC.

In addition, numerous also-ran devices also support AAC, including SanDisk Sansa e200R, Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), Sony Walkman S series (and A and E series with firmware update), Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, BenQ-Siemens, Philips, Nokia Nseries and other Nokia multimedia phones, Palm OS PDAs, even the hapless Microsoft Zune, among others. We won’t even get into the wide array of software applications that support AAC. More info here.

Next time, Mr. Mulligan, do your research before blogging.

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Comment Feed

34 Comments

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Jumbo

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:25 pm · Reply

What a fool/tool. I can’t decide which one fits better. Oh, that’s right, they both do. A truly blithering idiot that some village is missing.

MW=Kept as in he should have Kept his blog to himself.
Mark Mulligan

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:26 pm · Reply

But, but, I did my “research” on Jupiter, not Earth! No AAC support there!
?what?

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:28 pm · Reply

He gives blogs a bad name…wait blogs is a bad name.
what's in a word?

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:29 pm · Reply

mulligan |ˈməligən| noun informal

1 (also mulligan stew) a stew made from odds and ends of food.

2 (in informal golf) an extra stroke allowed after a poor shot, not counted on the scorecard. ORIGIN early 20th cent.: apparently from the surname Mulligan.
ApplePi

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:31 pm · Reply

This is so huge!!!!!

Cha Ching in a huge way! Soon even I will be buying music just for the convenience! I think a lot of people don’t buy for the quality of the music and the pain-in-the-ass system of not being able to share it. Apple hits it i 1 shot!

WooHoo

-Pi
AJK aka Maximus

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:33 pm · Reply

I couldn’t believe people are still getting this wrong and writing about it so I had to submbit it to MDN.

If I could have easily found a way to contact him I would have put him straight.
Allen

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:34 pm · Reply

“AAC isn’t supported by majority of digital music players’

——–

Now, they will..
twilightmoon@mac.com

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:34 pm · Reply

Its possible that the “majority” of also ran devices do not (yet) support AAC, and if true, that sort of proves his point. He’s not really attackng Apple for this but rather calling it a smart tactic to cement AAC as the de facto standard, which it just very well might do.

If there’s numerous devices that dont have AAC support yet but they quickly add it tomorrow, then that shows that Apple drove the standard (and not Microsoft).

This is more about format war than about the iPod, for winning the format war will help Apple more in the long run than anything short term helps iPods. Remember Apple sells Apple TV, iPods, and soon iPhones. Possibly more in the future. The more AAC out there and the less Windows Media crap the better, IMO.
theloniousMac

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:38 pm · Reply

One thing I’ve always hated about the Jupiter site is that the analysts are allowed to put whatever they want out there, and there is no way to respond to them.

Jupiter does not get the Internet, not in the least.
Huh?

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:43 pm · Reply

What digital music devices available to consumers, excluding iPod, can also play audio files in ACC format? Do these devices have unlimited access to iTunes?
Short Bus Driver

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:45 pm · Reply

Huh?

What are you a retard? Read the MacDailyNews Take and follow the link MDN has provided for more, you moron.
mac user 47

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:46 pm · Reply

RE: what’s in a word?

isn’t that a Bon Jovi song?
Mr. Peabody

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:52 pm · Reply

Can we just start calling it MP4 now – please? When MP3 players first started arriving on the market, and I learned that most of them only played MP3′s (at that time) AND that they were not upgradable, I was flabbergasted. Knowing that, when MP3 took off, better compression algorhythms would inevitably be written, it was impossible for me to comprehend a non-upgradable MP3 player.

Now, lets talk about MPEG2 – When are satellite distributors like DirecTV and DishNet, etc. going to move to MP4 [H.264], hmmmm? The smaller file sizes of MP4 video, at lower bit rates, look measurably better than high bit rate MPEG2.
gforce

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:53 pm · Reply

Not to mention that if you don’t like AAC … and since these tracks won’t be DRM then there is a little menu in iTunes that says “CONVERT TO MP3″

feel free to degrade the quality of your own music by doing this Mr. Mulligan. Just chose the button that says 128 and enjoy your MP3 that works on the majority of the non-majority MP3 player of your choice.
bob

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:54 pm · Reply

We’ve got to get the word out that AAC is *not* a proprietary Apple format.

People are so used to dealing with MS, that they assume there’s some hidden “screw you” in every seemingly good announcement.

AAC is an audio *standard* and can be readily adopted by anyone.
Toasty!

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:59 pm · Reply

Umm.. someone forgot to mention that you can set your iTunes import function to MP3 and then right click on ANY AAC file and convert it easly to MP3 format at your prefered bitrate. Hell youc an convert whole arrays of songs at a time. This is what NO DRM will also give you an option to do. And as far as I recall, MP3 is support by most EVERY MP3 player. Duh!
Toasty!

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:02 pm · Reply

gForce beat me to it! Damn!
DJ

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:04 pm · Reply

Dork.
Falkirk

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:05 pm · Reply

Look, I’m not trying to defend Mr. Mulligan’s ignorange of the extensive use of the AAC format.

But once again, MDN opts to be snide and condenscending even when it has no reason to do so.

“MacDailyNews Take: Mark, you should’ve spent a little while longer digesting. AAC is supported by the vast majority of digital music players. They’re called “iPods.” Look them up, if you’re not familiar with the product line. It’s painfully obvious that most of the installed base of players support AAC.”

MDN, I appreciate that you want to smack this guy down, but you can’t do it by inadvertantly supporting his argument. Mulligan is arguing that while AAC is not a closed standard it is, in reality, only supported by Ipods. (As you’ve pointed out, he’s wrong). Mulligan concludes that it was a very smart move of Apple to support a standard that Ipods dominate.

So your argument, above, that “AAC is supported by the vast majority of digital music players (i.e., Ipods)” doesn’t weaken Mulligan’s argument. It makes it.

I really like MDN, but they are feeling their oats today and smacking people down without regard to logic or facts. And it’s so unnecessary. Let’s show some courtesy and grace. Or at the very least, let’s stay logically consistant.
NetworkAnalyzer

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:06 pm · Reply

Analysts exist to make people comfortable with their prejudices.
DLMeyer

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:10 pm · Reply

MDN, you misunderstood his intent: he intended to say “which isn’t supported by the majority of kinds of digital music players.” This should have been obvious from the context.

That said, he’s still wrong! There are over a dozen types of iPods, including colors, but that isn’t half the story. There are more kinds of iTunes-compatible PCs out there than there are dedicated MP3-players put together. And, every one is happy with AAC. Every single one. And Audacity, a free music editor, will convert AAC to MP3 for you. For Free.

DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page
Biff Parker

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:31 pm · Reply

I remember a Jupiter analyst a few years back crowing about their new report that clients could buy (for some ungodly amount) citing that the digital music player market would grow to some 25,000 sold during the year (2005?).
The next day Apple released its quarterly report, noting they had sold, like 19,000 in the quarter.
So the Jupiter analyst wrote, amusingly … “well, I guess we’ll have to look closer at our figures …”
Stupid analysts.
MCCFR

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:47 pm · Reply

Huh?,

Any hardware developer who has access to the iTunes SDK can create a plug-in for their device, at which point it can play any DRM-free format (MP3, AAC, WAV).

Sadly, the “PlayedForSure” crowd decided to ignore the possibility of a future based on open standards and instead went for WMA instead in addition to MP3: this is their fault as opposed to that of Apple Inc.

Loads of mobile phones come with AAC support, however some of these suppliers are too lazy and complacent to focus on how their customers use their hardware and haven’t bothered to create iTunes plug-ins; this is their fault as opposed to that of Apple Inc.

AAC is a technology developed by Dolby Laboratories and can be licensed on a commercial basis from that company. The means to create plug-ins for iTunes is well-known and the SDK is available from Apple Inc.

You do the math as to where the problem lies.
TommyWP

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 2:06 pm · Reply

To covert any song inside of your iTunes library from AAC to MP3, WAV, etc…
Open iTunes, go to Preference–>Advanced–>Importing–>Importing Using–> Select the format you want to convert–> close preferences. Now go to your library, select a song and convert it, after this finish you gonna have the same song but with different format.
This is what I do.
bud+why+zer

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 2:31 pm · Reply

You forgot to mention that AAC is also supported by the Sony PlayStation 3.