“There is currently no industry standard for downloadable MP3s. This means that, for instance, MP3s downloaded from Sony’s Connect service can only be played on Sony’s MP3 Walkman, and not on the more popular iPod (and vice versa),” Neil McCormick writes for The Telegraph.
“Behind the scenes, the battle waging for commercial dominance is reminiscent of the early 1980s cut-throat competition to establish video standards between VHS and Betamax. And lest we forget, VHS won despite being technically inferior,’ McCormick writes.
“Although Apple has been the pioneer in the MP3 market, with Sony/BMG controlling 25 per cent of the music market it will be interesting to see whose digital distribution platforms will survive,” McCormick writes. “Will all those expensive iPods we have been rushing out to buy wind up piled high in car-boot sales alongside Betamax video players and 8-track cassette machines?”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Confused? Ditto. iPod can play AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF, Apple Lossless and WAV, so we don’t see why this writer’s concerned. If he means to ponder whether iTunes Music Store protected AAC (.m4p) content will possibly end up as “the next Betamax,” the songs can be easily transcoded into different formats with minimal degradation. That particular scenario doesn’t look remotely plausible at this time; 100 million sold and counting. We don’t see any reason for concern here.
Excuse my lack of historical perspective here, but did Betamax ever have 52% share of units sold? Or how about 70+%…. did it have that?
That must be a pretty good joint that writer is smoking.. maybe he should pass it around? I don’t smoke tho…
Wasn’t VHS already established and then Betamax came on the scene and tried to take over? Seems like a different situation entirely. Apple is currently the defacto standard. About the only similiarity is that both the iPod and Betamax are superior.
And I don’t have any idea at all where he came up with the 8 track player thing. Maybe he kept using his til a few years ago?
I don’t know this is true, but i heard sony refused to licence betamax to the pornographic industry, vhs
did, and this helped vhs to become more popular than betamax.
You people need to read a little more. The headline was irrelevant.
This is the important part: Sony/BMG controls 25 per cent of the music market.
All they have to do is say no to iTunes. Wouldn’t be the first time someone used marketshare as clout, now would it.
the ipod is the industry standard
VHS won the war because of (Japanese) Porn…
Sony put out Betamax several years ahead of VHS, but dragged its feet in licensing. JVC licensed VHS widely, but most importantly, licensed it for X-rated content, which Sony refused to do.
Moron. Please move along.
Thelonius:
But distribution is everything.
If you’re Will Smith – a Sony artiste who has declared the iPod to be the greatest thing since someone made the connection between a knife and a loaf of bread – and your label suddenly make a unilateral decision that runs counter to your interests, you will probably kick up a stink.
And ultimately, iTMS’s market share will be such that Apple will be able to use a carrot/stick based approach to ensuring that labels don’t cherry pick which artists they’re willing to have on iTMS.
This guy is a tech writer? MP3 is MP3 is MP3. It is standard and any device capable of playing MP3 can play MP3 downloaded from any Internet sites. The only way an MP3 fails to play is if it’s wrapped in DRM, which at that points ceases to be just MP3. I think this guy confuses digital music with MP3.
Also, Sony Connect service uses ATRAC3, not MP3, so how do you download MP3 from Sony Connect? Apple is not a pioneer in MP3 market, but is a pioneer in hard drive based digital player and music download store.
Nobody: Agreed.
This schlep is making things more confusing to the consumer by stating that MP3s downloaded from Sony can only be played on Sony’s walkman. All the music players we’re talking about play MP3s. He should talk about ATRAC3 being possibly the betamax of the music world.
One big diff, though. Betamax was actually better than VHS, but lost. ATRAC3 hasn’t given us any proof that it’s better than AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 VBR, or even WMA.
Could it be that someone – perhaps a rival company – paid this man to write this junk?
BetaMax: 1975
1 1/2 hr standard playback time
Limited number of licencee manufacturers
Quadraphonic sound
No pr0n
VHS: 1977
2 hr Standard playback time
Unlimited number of licencee manufacturers
Sound
Pr0n
Have I missed anything?
iPod’s are so expensive 🙁 I think I’ll have to take out a UK Loans
Sony’s music division will want the revenue stream that iTunes will provide to them (for practically free) . If they control 25% of the ‘mainstream’ music they get (approx) 25% of the labels share of all iTunes revenue .
With 100 million songs sold Sony/BMG would get over $16 million , nothing to sneeze at . (assuming the labels get 65cent from each 99cent download) .
As additional geographies get added to the ITMS , the number of songs sold at iTMS in 5 years time could surpass 500 million per year which would translate into $80 million , recurring , revenue for Sony/BMG , for doing practically nothing . I think their share holders would also be asking questions if they were seen to be delibertly excluding access to iTMS for their catalogue .
Also , a licencing agreenment and a firmware update would allow the iPod to play any format that Apple choses to support if they needed to in the future .
I think the most important different between Beta and VHS was that you could fit an average movie on a single VHS tape, but not on a single Beta tape. That’s what killed Beta. Well, that and the porno thing. But the playback time didn’t help Beta.
I’m quite sure that if Apple decides that iPod’s survival depends on supporting WMA or ATRAC3 or whatever, it will ship an iPod Update that adds that support. But that day won’t come until iPod’s market share begins to decrease. Right now, it’s increasing, so talk about iPod’s demise seems a tad premature.
Off topic, tho’ interesting.
On July 20th, 2004, the EU approved a 50-50 merger between Sony Music Entertainment and BMG. The new company will be called Sony BMG and will, together with RIAA partner Universal, control 60% of the world wide music market. (Wikipedia)
Amazing, July 2004 and there are still some empty heads who still write about the iPod only capable to use own proprietary format.
sheeeessh, some people
What an idiot.
As others have noted, the iPod plays lots of different formats. Sony’s Walkperson does not. Which just begs the question:
“Is Sony’s ATRAC format the next Betamax?”
I wouldn’t scoff at Sony. They’ve obviously decided not to license their music to Apple for download, choosing instead to keep the whole thing in-house. If Sony can turn a profit selling their own music on-line, it won’t be long before the other major labels decide to do the same thing. That may not quite kill iTMS but it would certainly create some heavy competition.
Apple basher, you suck and soon all the world will know!!!
If an automotive columnist wrote stuff like “Chevys made by Ford won’t accept parts made for Chevys made by Chrysler” he’d lose his job. Isn’t high technology fun…?
Better title would be “will Sony’s Connect become the next Betamax? “
So, yes, Sony controls 25% of the music business. But, the flip side of that is that other companies control 75%. If Sony were to withhold it’s content from ITMS, thus limiting it’s profitibility to the other 75%, that 75% may react by withholding their music content from SonyConnect. After all, fair is fair. I don’t that would be a wise choice for Sony.
Columnists bombard us relentlessly with reminders that the miniscule market share held by the Mac OS will forever relegate it to obscurity, that it can never become the industry standard in the way Windows has.
And yet, when an Apple product commands an overwhelming majority share of its respective market – in other words, has become an industry standard – the pundits again predict doom for Apple.
WTF?
Perhaps they spell ‘bias’ differently over in the UK, but I know it when I see it.
I think it is funny.
Sony, the company that developed the Betamax format, which lost out to an inferior product, has now created an inferior product hoping to defeat the superior iPod.
It could happen.
The Telegraph writer screwed the pooch. On another note, I guess if BMW’s sell well to Mac users, the same applies for Sony, or at least it used to. In other words, Sony had better not piss off Mac users.
A group of electronic companies including Sony agreed on a 1/2″ tape format called VHS. Sony introduce an incompatible format, Beta, before agreed date of introduction. Angry VHS members came up with LP and EP to punish Sony. VHS had longer tape/larger spool, so Beta had better video quality on SP, but could not compete with VHS EP’s play time (I believe difference was 6 hours vs. 8 hours). One interesting note is, once Beta died, we did not see much improvement in the VHS performance. We should thank Sony for the Beta, giving us Hi-Fi VHS format.
If Sony/BMG uses its music properties to beat Apple, it will be taken to the court for its anti-competitive behavior. Sony/BMG won’t be dumb enough to do that.
This three audio format race is good for the consumers. They will all try to create better sound for less bytes. Which one win will be interesting. Since Apple is major share holder of portal player, who makes the chip for both iPod and WMF players, Apple will win as long as AAC or WMF wins the race.
“Is Sony’s ATRAC format the next Betamax?”
I think Peter has it exactly right with his insightful question. Sony will attempt to bum-rush iTMS by making their ATRAC3 format the standard on their Connect download service, but the format has been so widely derided for its poor quality at lower bit-rates that in my opinion it’s a non-starter.
The Betamax was also the technology leader.
And while Betamax is no more, Sony parlayed its R&D of Betamax into what was the Professional Standard Tape format for years to come.. Beta. Yes, those exact same Betamax video cassettes filled with newer forms of oxide tape are now used in the broadcast industry around the world.
Whle VHS tried the same thing (MII), it was never adopted and failed. So even though Betamax is gone, its legacy lives on.
You can bet Sony made a bundle on its professional Beta format.
However, I don’t think the iPod and iTMS is headed down that Betamax path.
Tha i Pod clan aint nuthin ta fsck wit…
It’s the *porn*, stupid!
I wouldn’t necessarily call it minimal degradation to convert a downloaded AAC file to MP3. First of all, the AAC file has suffered degradation from the original and then its being converted again. So yes, the author is correct. There’s only one real solution. And that is forget about proprietary formats (i.e. MP3, AAC, ALTRAC, WMA). Forget about DRM of any kind. Support only Ogg Vorbis for compressed music formats and FLAC or one of the other open source lossless formats for CD quality.
I say this to the online music stores as well as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
For those that don’t know, before I switched from a Sony Vaio laptop to an Apple G5, I used SonicStage, Sony’s horrible, horrible mp3 player. In the whole history of my life, this was the worst program I have ever used. Maybe it was Windows, maybe it was the computer, but that program is worse (at least in it’s infancy stages) than any other program I’ve ever used.
Don’t worry, if people are choosing that program over iTunes, there is nothing you can do to help them. They are considerably stupid and we don’t want them on our side.
Also, why does the Sony Connect website have McDonald’s ads all over it? What a horrible thing to advertise. While you’re buying our tunes, why don’t you get a free Big Mac and make you fatter.
Don’t forget, this is not about just Mac users. Millions of Windows users have also bought iPods and use iTunes. They’re not about to buy the new Sony player, use the new Sony service, and either have to carry two music players or convert all of their iTunes music to Sony’s format, if that is even possible (Does Sony provide for importing from iTunes?) It’s quite a job to export all your iTunes from AAC to AIFF, WAV, or MP3 format, then import into Sony’s software, which probably doesn’t work as well as iTunes anyway.
Here’s the unpublished, but true, reason why VHS won the standards war. And yes, it’s the type of thing you don’t read in Harvard Business Review Article.
VHS failed in large part because the adult video industry supported the VHS format. Yes, people found a way to enjoy movies in a private manner, and it became a $12Billion business.
It’s weird, but true.
These “journalists” are so retarded that they don’t do any homework before writing any craps!!! Are they high school dropouts? At least everybody likes my “documentary” !!! The audience just took my film on face value and never do any research themselves. If they believe any “ documentary “ is a representation of “ truth”, then there must be hundreds of UFOs flying over our heads because of all the “ documentary” on SiFi channel about UFOs!!! Suckers!!!!
BTY, my next ” documentary ” will be titled ” Obesity in America” and I’m the prime example of that!!!! I got rich and FAT from making craps and promoting hatred while all the soldiers out there are defending the country, and I got to be crowned the “the great American patriot” !!!! Heee Heee Heee!! Boy, some people like Linda are so screwed up!!!!
wake up M, if you love the soldiers bring them home don’t make them die for Bush buddies to get rich while he lies to us about the reasons.
do u think the footage in that movie was all actors? look on his web site for all the facts in the movie and where to prove them for yourself. the sci fi channel cant do that
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then make your own opinion but u don’t help america by pretending the facts aren’t facts. you only help Bush wreck the country even worse.
*jaw drops to floor*
Mac Beth gets serious! Yay! Damn, there goes the only girl on this board with funny innuendos.
j/k
If I want facts, I go to the library, or ask a college professor. I go to movies, including “documentary”, for entertainment, you morons!!!!!
The article is correct in stating that there is no industry standard for downloading music. There are only a set of proprietary formats. Apple’s iPod is not a ‘standard’ because it is not compatable with other online music stores. It’s not an ‘industry standard’ if only one company has the rights to the technology and doesn’t licence it out. Firewire is a standard. Mp3 is a standard. Fairplay isn’t.
Apple could decide to become the standard by licencing Fairplay the way they licence Firewire and Quicktime, etc.
I agree with other posts that the iPod is superior to other devices – and the iTunes Music Store is the best. But the field is still in its infancy. Apple could never have succeeded without opening the iPod & iTMS to Windows users. Now they should go all the way and really make Fairplay the standard DRM by licencing it.
Fairplay may not be an industry standard, but it is a de facto standard. Sometimes, that may be all that is needed.
WMA is going to be the next ‘betamax’
Ah yes, the myth of the superiority of Betamax. It is like the myth of the superiority of Dvorak keyboards. Just because people keep repeating it doesn’t make it true.
Betamax was NOT better than VHS. It had marginally better quality when compared to the highest quality setting on VHS but VHS you could have several times the duration of the 1 hour Betamax tape. And guess what, people chose the lower quality setting on VHS almost all the time. Even with a choice of higher quality, most people chose convenience of having longer recordings on a tape.
The parallel here is remarkable. The CD has significantly better sound quality than an MP3 or AAC, but no one really seems to care. That is because the absolute quality of the audio is not as important to most of us as the availability of a very large playlist. We trade absolute audio quality for convenience. The VHS tape was the exact same thing. It was a better product because it was a better fit for the needs of consumers at the time.
I think Neil got confused with Apple’s OS market share with the iPod’s. True, you need an iPod or Mac to play the AAC’s. So what. MP3 is an open standard and there’s nothing closed about the iPod other than the AAC format (which has easy and reasonable conversions). Apple is not an MP3 market pioneer – they are an MP3 player pioneer and online music store pioneer.
rons a loser and known apple basher. your stupid ron your family hates you and you will proboly have a heart attack from the secret anger you hold for wintel machines!!!
Neil is pretty wrong on every account.
The Betamax analogy does not hold for several reasons.
a) Betamax come first. Betamax was a 60minute format. VHS was a 90 minute format. JVC will willing to license format – Sony was not so willing.
b) Betamax and tapes required a hardware manufacturer – with AAC Mp4’s – there is already Fairplay – if tomorrow, Apple closed up itms – there would be a dozen software converters. Even the most obscure coleco file can be read – and that was 20 years ago!
AAC Mp4’s are also digital – unlike analog tapes that need to be converted in real time, you can convert dozens of files in minutes.
Unless Sony refused to license their songs to Apple – just a wee bit of a antitrust issue – not going to happen.
I like how he insinuates that Apple’s MP3 (BTW it is not mp3, it’s AAC) will be the one that will become obsolete without committing to any prediction. This way no one can later say he was wrong.
this guy even mentions 8TRACK in the caption.. yet.. doesn’t see the irony..
who the hell is going to reccomend an mp3-less player to friends! Obviously, Sony is NOT p2p friendly like the iPod and will fail.
“It is like the myth of the superiority of Dvorak keyboards.”
jdb,
Actually, if you bothered to do a little research, you’d find that it’s not a myth at all; the Dvorak layout is more efficient because it dramatically reduces finger movement, and is more comfortable for RSI sufferers. Sure, advanced QWERTY typists can be blazingly fast, but equally fast Dvorak typists are exerting far less effort. I’m not an ergonomics expert, but I read somewhere that using only the home keys in QWERTY, one can type some 150 English words, while with the Dvorak home keys, one can type something like three thousand.
I presume you’re referring to Prof. Stan Liebowitz’s study attacking the notion that the Dvorak layout was superior. I refer you to Marcus Brooks’ excellent page, Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard, and his examination of the criticism by Liebowitz and others.
In my own experience, I find that I have become a much better touch typist. My speed has improved about 10% since I switched and I make fewer mistakes, but the real payoff for me is that it is much, much more comfortable, and I have to say that that has been far more important to me than speed. Personally, I have no opinion on whether it would benefit everyone to make the switch, but it has certainly been worth the time and effort for me.
What can I say? I’m a proud member of an even smaller subset of computer users, a Mac-owning Dvorak user. Just say no to the Windows-Intel-QWERTY unholy trinity!
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I was impressed by this comment from Bono
“U2’s lead singer Bono has proposed a radical solution. “If it is on the internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month,” he told me.”
Even if the writter of the article thought that Sony’s Connect music store sold its tracks as mp3 as previously mentioned on this forum.
VHS and the VCR is now irrelevant or very close to being so. So, winning the war was a very temporary thing. How many people converted their VHS collection to DVD? How many transferred their records (those round black things) to CD?
The iPod will go away and so will digital music in it’s current form. Everything changes.
Sony’s music store and playback machines are not making money… if you’re sony/BMG would you want to limit your market to that niche… remember, their machines don’t even play WMA….
In Turkey, we say:
A mad man threw a stone into a well.
40 wise people try to take it out.
We belive on freedom of speech. But, dude..?
Ipod vs. Betamax ? Come on!
As far as im concerned the company that provides a digital music player that can read as many different audio formats as possible is the company that will eventually win the race.
Sony’s attempt of their own proprietry fromat is 3 years too late!
Sony should have done this when APPLE launched the ipod – as it is they took their eye off the ball and instead of a market leader they are just another alsoran.
Its a shame, because Sony used to be like APPLE years ago and had innovation and creating new markets for products.
These days they are just and Sanyo or Alba or Pioneer and don’t innovate.
What peddlers of the “format war” ignore is that there is this big thing out there called the internet where people can share files amongst themselves FOC that they are unable to buy for their particular player, Sony, Universal and Co. dont mean shit. They can either get wise like Apple have done or get packing.
When I purchase my first Apple, serial number A000000721, Apple had close to 90% market share, they refused to let others play in their sand box, along came the others with inferior machines and the rest is history. Apple continues to do the same thing with the iPod and when the 1/2 price lot look a likes come along the general public will buy them and so will the iPod be history. Apple start licensing your technology to others, don�t make the same mistake again.
Re: Joe
I totally agree!
I just hope someone from APPLE is reading these bulletin boards!!
APPLE needs to use its position now in the music market to create more partnerships and licence the format!
We all know that this is what Microsoft did with it’s OS and we all know what happened after they did that – GLOBAL MARKET SHARE DOMINANCE!
If APPLE licence their format then WMA will be dead and buried!
On so will Microsoft’s chance to have WMA as the global format standard.
It’s all about the licensing. Betamax lost because the licensing was limited. PC’s beat Mac’s because IBM opened it up to ‘clones.’ Who wins the licensing war wins the game. Winner takes all.
wayne…
eh… careful.. the POINT of windows is that it pretty much runs on any computer.. that’s why it’s such a pain in the ass to use and to improve..
since apple makes the hardware they don’t have to worry about making the OS adaptable
Windows won because it benefitted from being the choice to pre-install for all different kinds of computers..considering Apple wasn’t even considering licensing.. so the prices started dropping on IBM compatibles.. simple economics
Why is Mandy Moore posting drivel about documentaries here?
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