“One thousand songs is just about the right size for a portable media player, according to a survey by Jupiter Research,” CNET News.com reports. “The online survey found that 90 percent of consumers have no more than 1,000 songs on their PCs. And 77 percent of the consumers Jupiter questioned said they’d be interested in purchasing a portable media player with a capacity of 1,000 songs. The 4GB hard drive included in Apple Computer’s iPod Mini, and in MP3 players from some Apple rivals, holds roughly that number of songs.”
CNET News.com reports., “Apple’s latest product was so popular in the United States that the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker had to push the player’s global release back from April to July. Hard drive size isn’t the only thing that matters to music lovers. When asked which features matter most, 55 percent listed a rechargeable battery, 52 percent said small device size, and 49 percent said the ability to connect the device to their computer. Vendors should be cognizant of these priorities, Jupiter said.”
“The Jupiter Research survey also found that 20 percent of consumers said playing MP3 files is important, versus 7 percent who would prefer files in Microsoft’s WMA format and fewer than 1 percent who prefer the Advanced Audio Coding format, an open standard that was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group and which is supported on Apple’s iTunes music store,” CNET News.com reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We don’t think average people know or care much about format, hence the high number for the most-recognizable format, MP3. MP3 is simply more widely recognized by the general public than WMA or AAC. The market dominance of Apple’s iTunes Music Store, with more than 80% market share according to Nielsen SoundScan proves that AAC is quite the viable format. Whether the average people surveyed know they prefer it or not, AAC is what they’re buying (while MP3 is what they’re stealing). Surveys are funny things and this survey’s AAC results don’t match the reality of the market.
In reality, AAC is basically mp3++, or mp4 for you non C++ junkies. All my iTunes songs are labeled m4p, so clearly apple isn’t using the AAC in the nomenclature for files.
Apple should really think about changing the file suffix to mp4 and then working that into their iPod ads. The common person would go, “mp4, that must be the new mp3 format… so it must be better!”
I hear them beating the death march for apple and it’s locked up practices. Apple don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. MY friends won’t go to aac, they understand mp4.
They hear apple and they hear no choices. I can’t say they are wrong.
Morons. iTunes rips to AAC by default. What do you think PC morons are creating as they rip with their cool newly downloaded iTunes? AAC. These are the same know-nothings that think IE is “The Internet.” 90%+ of the world is like this. Morons. Of course, they don’t recognize AAC or know enough to prefer AAC, they are morons and are therefore moronic and ignorant. Ahhh, the bliss they must feel 24/7.
As I’ve said from Day One:
For marketing purposes:
Apple renamed AltiVec,” Velocity Engine.”
Apple renamed PowerPC970, “G5.”
Apple blew it by not renaming AAC, “MP4.”
Jobs, were you out sick or napping the day Phil blew this very simple decision?
i love my mini and everybody else loves it too, and none of us could care less about the format
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Here we go again…
I just want my iTMS Europe and then rest of the world can debate about WMA.
MP3 does not translate to MP4.
MP3 really is MPEG-2 Layer 3. MP4 is MPEG-4. AAC is just an audio layer of MPEG-4.
MP4 should be used for true MPEG-4 files. (The reason why MP3 gets away with it is that MPEG-3 went absolutely NOWHERE. I don’t know of a single person who has an MPEG-3 file on their system.)
I agree stronly with the statement that 99% of users out there have no idea what CODEC they are using. It is like the 99.9% of the people have no idea that a “Thermos” bottle is actually a brand name. 30 years ago we used to “Xerox” things even if the photocopier was made by Kodak. Same with “Cresent” wrench and many others.
With HP shipping iTunes, Real also using AAC and others supporting the AAC CODEC too, I don’t worry about AAC being supplanted anytime soon. Who cares that 99% of people don’t know they have AAC files?
So then Apple blew it by not calling AAC something like “Super MP3” or “MP3+” or “MP4 Audio.”
Your average Windows sheep prefer Q-Tips to cotton swabs and Kleenex to facial tissues. Windows users are generally Wal-Martesque idiots. Oh yeah, they’re cheap, too.
I wonder what percentage of those people had NO SONGS on their computer. It would make more sense to not count those people’s views in any further questions, although their percentage of the population should be reported. Also, if people have music on their home computer but are prevented by company rules from having it on the computer at work, how is this accounted for? Not a very good survey methodology, therefore ignore it.
I think a lot of people are just used to playing music on their PC or MP3 players from their PC so when you tell them that they cant play files from Kazaa, Grokster, Napster, Limewire and other P2P networks because iPod doesnt support .WMA they are suprised and confused and ask why not… However when you explain it to them they begin to understand.
It is however easy enough to batch convert .wma files into MP3 files to be imported into iTunes so that is not a problem.
I think if you asked people whether they would prefer a format that can play on the iPod or one that cant, 99% would vote for the iPod compatible format.
iPod compatible – you read it here first.
Just wondering what the other 72% prefer if not mp3, wma or AAC. Or perhaps they don’t care as long as it works.
The dumbing down of the human race which explains why Windows works so well in the world, people really don’t expect too much.
Besides I hate research companies as they can say what they like, but they never tell you what questions were asked, if it had multiple choices & what cross section of people were in the poll etc etc etc……….
these stories really piss me off.
The format wars misses the point. AAC is open, but iTunes Music Store is not, since it uses “FairPlay” Digital Rights Management, which is a closed proprietary format. It’s about as “open” and “standard” as taking a JPEG file and compressing it with a secret ZIP format and not telling anyone how to uncompress it.
Apple’s recent quarterly report said something like 40-50% of the player market is iPods. Unless I’m mis-remembering, that’s down dramatically from where it has been. That means less than half the players out there can play files from the iTunes Music Store… and since the iPod can’t play WMP files, it means Apple has probably permenantly lost these customers, while all the other vendors can still compete for them.
They dont care, as long as it works, my parents and grandparents are perfect examples. My dad carried around a Casio BOSS organizer for 10 years before we were able to get him to change to a PALM, he loves it, even though he only uses it for the address book. I would say that most people arent “morons” they just dont have or take the time to learn about what the tech companies are dreaming up. Those of us in these blogs or whatever you want to call them, are the self enlightened. We appreciate the details of our machines. Most people have no idea how a car works, how their cell phone can work without wires. People choose things for the most part if they can easily turn it on and get it to do what they read about in the morning papers. One more thing is the legacy of a windows world for the past 2 decades, they are afraid to explore because they dont want to cause a problem, why do you think that once people get a mac they arent afraid of computers anymore and start to explore the details that arent on the desktop?
“So then Apple blew it by not calling AAC something like ‘Super MP3’ or ‘MP3+’ or ‘MP4 Audio.'”
…or maybe…
“MP Extreme”
:^)
20% prefere mp3, 7% prefer wma, and 1% prefer aac. I guess that means that 72% must prefer ogg vorbis!
This is a bit off-topic, but I wish some internet music company would just rent music out rather than having to purchase it. I’d love to rent music monthly and don’t like the neo-futuristic capabilities like making a CD. That’s creepy. I hope some company does that. Until then, I guess I’ll have to own the songs.
Dang Nabbit.
Pal –
-Carl.
meg mp3 extreme
sorry
mega mp3 extreme
I’m with Red Wings. I’ve convinced most of my in-laws that a Mac should be their next purchase, but my father-in-law will make the purchase and he keeps asking about networking it with winxp at work. Never mind that his office only has one computer and there isn’t a network anywhere in sight. All he knows about computers are how to read the specs. As long as it works and he feels like he got his money’s worth, he’s happy. When it’s not working, he’s bringing it to my house so I can fix it. I told him to keep is laptop for work and get a Mac so the rest of the family can enjoy a computer for once. “Add a Mac…” what a novel idea <sarcasm>
Sam: If the DRM was open standard, it wouldn’t be a DRM. It’s there to protect the AAC/MP4 files from being played on computers that are not authorized to do so; you can’t do that with an open standard, since anyone could open them up.
Hey!… what about OGG?!!