Red Herring reporter is quite confused about MP3 vs. AAC

19 years ago

“Apple and EMI announced on Monday an agreement to sell higher-quality versions of the record label’s songs without digital protections through iTunes next month, a landmark deal that paves the way for other big labels to follow suit,” Michael Cohn reports for Red Herring.

“EMI’s decision to sell its entire music catalog without copyright protection software is a startling reversal by one of the key players in an industry that has fought fiercely to prevent Internet pirates from copying its songs,” Cohn reports.

Cohn reports, “The move, if emulated by other music labels, threatens to rock the foundation on which a growing group of startups have built their businesses in digital rights management (DRM) technologies… ‘It’s fantastic that one of the majors is moving in a direction that will significantly grow the industry,’ eMusic CEO David Pakman said. ‘This is what customers want, and they will respond by buying music in universal formats from a number of other retailers.'”

Cohn reports, “Mr. Pakman expects EMI to begin licensing the DRM-free, higher-quality music soon to other online retailers such as eMusic… He believes he can still compete with iTunes because eMusic sells music in MP3 format, which runs on a wide variety of digital music players, unlike Apple’s FairPlay format for the iPod.”

MacDailyNews Take: Cue record player needle scratching across vinyl. Contact: . Over half a decade later and over 2 billion tracks sold and still these “reporters” know nothing and seem to want to inflict their readers with ignorance. Google “AAC” and then “FairPlay,” read a bit of information, and then write, Mr. Cohn. Does Red Herring employ an editor? Ah, yes: http://www.redherring.com/ContactUs.aspx

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Kevin” for the heads up.]

MacDailyNews Obligatory Note: FairPlay is Apple’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. EMI’s DRM-free music sold via Apple’s iTunes Store will not use FairPlay. EMI’s DRM-free music sold via Apple’s iTunes Store will be in Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. AAC is the successor to MP3 and is supported by iPod and also a wide variety of digital music players, including also-ran devices such as the 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. More about AAC here.