“Owners of Apple’s popular iPod are finding that music encoded in the format, or codec, known as WMA, for Windows Media Audio by Microsoft, will not play on the iPod, which performs best with music encoded with a format called AAC, for Advanced Audio Coding,” Michel Marriott writes for TechNewsWorld.
“The codec confusion needs to get resolved before we see dramatic changes in the market, said Van Baker, vice president of GartnerG2, a research service from Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut.
The variety, and the difficulty of choosing, may only increase in the short term. On Tuesday, Apple unveiled a smaller iPod called the iPod Mini, and digital-music announcements by other manufacturers are planned over the next few days at the Consumer Electronics Show, a major trade event in Las Vegas,” Marriott writes.
“Hyder Rabbani, president and chief operating officer at Archos, a maker of portable digital storage devices and music players, compares today’s digital audio environment to the dawn of the cellular telephone industry, when there was a confounding mix of competing systems and formats.
It stalled the entire adoption of the industry, Rabbani said, noting that many consumers waited until the formats shook out to a dominant few before they bought a cellphone. There’s a similar challenge today,” Marriott writes. “In addition to the hardware, a dizzying array of software is required to manage digital music, including the formats used for storage and playback. For starters, there are MP3, MP3 Pro, WMA, AAC and a format called Atrac that is used almost exclusively by Sony. Each format has its advantages and peculiarities, and not all players read all formats.”
“At the big DataVision Computer Video store in Manhattan, personal digital audio players were one of best-sellers of the holiday season, said John Griffin, the store’s sales manager, and iPods were clearly the players of choice. For every one of the other players we sold, people bought 70 to 80 iPods, Griffin said recently as shoppers ogled a store display of more than 50 different models of players ranging in size from cigarette lighters to small jewelry boxes,” Marriott writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The format shakeout will continue, but if we were to bet, we’d be betting on AAC/Fairplay. That’s the format served up by the market-dominating Apple iTunes Music Store and also the format the leading digital music player, Apple’s iPod, uses (along with MP3 (up to 320 kbps), MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR) and WAV). In addition, the announcement that HP will rebrand Apple’s iPod and the upcoming Apple/Pepsi 100 million song promotion will futher cement AAC/Fairplay as the defacto legit digital music format.
(I’m sure you were joking.)
The dude forgot Ogg Vorbis!
Bomb: Great Scott! You’re right! I hadn’t put the clues together, but it’s obvious that you’re right about Quicktime playing iTMS tunes. Anyone licensing Quicktime could play AAC/Fairplay files.
Thanks for the ton o’ bricks.
Still, I’m waiting for a consumer product to feature iTMS playback. Even if it can be done with computer software other than iTunes, that help a consumer’s confidence level with regard to iTMS. I want to see some non-Apple devices with iTMS playback on their feature list.
I know it’s just a nit, but that’s the way I feel. I’ll get over it.
Using hooks into QuickTime is how Real’s new player is able to play iTMS files. For some strange reason, many sites are saying that Real is “working around” or outright broken FairPlay, which isn’t true. Not that tech reporters are noted for thier intelligence, mind you.
Anyway, here’s a guess on the MP4 moniker. I was habitually refering to AAC as “MP4” in trying to explain it’s benefits to folks not technically inclined. When I explained it as the improvement, or extension of the MP3 “standard” to folks, the got it instantly. One would think it a no-brainer. My guess is that the AAC moniker is for touchy media execs, who probably go into anaphylactic shock at the mere mention of MP3, which they heavily associate with P2P … or pirate-2-pirate. Just a guess.
As for advertising the codec, hmm. Remember when players were actually referred to as an “MP3 Player” You’ll notice they don’t anymore. They’re all “Digital Music Players” now. Even the WMA only ones don’t refer to themselves as “WMA Players.”
When MS is trying to tout it’s media format, you’ll note they say things like “superior quality” and “more choice.” They aren’t so quick to say thier DRM offers “more choice” (to consumers anyway). Thier description of “choice” odd, too. It’s about having a supposedly wide number of devices to pick from, but never do they pitch the real meaning of “choice”: interoperability. Because of the DRM, they can’t guarentee that all files encoded with WMA will all work the same way. Talk about confusing customers! With WMA, there’s a potential minefield of differing “approved uses.” Just a thought …
“For every one of the other players we sold, people bought 70 to 80 iPods, Griffin said recently”
Wow, my first thought was it’s a fake statistic. At 70/71 to 80/81, Apple has about 98.6% marketshare, way above 30% cited by Jobs. Then, I noticed that this was a Manhattan store. Suddenly, it made sense.
It’s wild.
For the first time, nothing but good news. And the incredulous reactions of the Wintel crowd, as the cracks show in their attempt to dominate another market with jive junk.
And I think that this whole thing is going to nudge Apple up close to a 2 digit marketshare. Close. I’ll be happy with 7% or 8%.
Meanwhile guys like this try to muddy the waters with:
“The codec confusion needs to get resolved before we see dramatic changes in the market, said Van Baker, vice president of GartnerG2, a research service from Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut.”
Confusion? The 30 million downloads don’t look like the act of a confused public. I have an iPod. I buy CDs and rip them to it, and I go to the iTunes music store. Which is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
I don’t feel the least confused, restricted, or shut out of anything or anyplace I want to be. Nor do the millions of other buyers of iPods.
These people are beginning to sound like Baghdad Bob.
Meanwhile, I’m loving this. If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me up…
dv
Kenny: RealPlayer recently announced new player will play AAC/Fairplay tunes bought in iTMS. For that the computer must have iTunes installed and be authorized to play those tracks.
Atomic Bomb, did you think I was joking? I don’t understand your second response. Do the files downloaded from Kazaa need to be “ripped” or will they play on an ipod? Can someone explain “ripping”? Thanks. If it seemed my question was not serious, it was. I am thinking about buying a mini ipod when they are available and if I can play my library on them, so much the better.
stewart: The files you have from Kazaa will play on your iPod. Again, if you can play a tune in iTunes, then it will play on your iPod.
Thanks Abomb
AAC is a nice optional format. I use it cause its smaller than MP3.
But I think the trillion or so songs in mp3 format floating around the net is a good indicated of the fact that it is the standard.
Stupid reporters
AAC is mp4, you mean MPEG committee cannot update/upgrade THEIR standard because previous vs in widely used? To their mind – and rightfully so – it is quite the opposite.
Steward,
Contrary to Disney’s Eisner believe, “ripping” does not mean “ripping off” which caused him to chide Apple for their “Rip. Mix. Burn.” campaign. Audio CDs contain music in uncompressed form, PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). In order to listen it on MP3 players, the songs must be copied and converted to MP3 format. This process is called ripping and most encoders can do the copying and conversion in one step. Since”ripping” involves a physical CD which you own, it is legal under fair use clause, as long as you don’t distribute it. Hence, Eisner looked stupid when he claimed “ripping” was a copyright violation.
Files downloaded from Kazaa are in many formats: WMA, AAC, OGG, MP3, etc. As long as the formats are MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC, iTunes and iPod will play them without any further effort. And as long as you own CDs of the songs you download or the songs are made available by the copyright owners, you stay legal.