

Music Labels to launch CMX, a new digital album format. - ajg1977
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/10/major-labels-new-digital-format

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leviathant
When I downloaded "The Slip" off Nine Inch Nails' website (for free), I chose
the 320kbps MP3 package... each MP3 had embedded artwork and lyrics, and the
album came with a PDF that had artwork, lyrics, credits, and all that. Their
previous release (Ghosts) came with desktop & mobile wallpapers, as well. Both
were released under the Creative Commons license, with "Ghosts" being listed
by the band on sites like The Pirate Bay, Waffles and What.cd on the hour of
their release.

I later bought The Slip's physical release - the CD came with a DVD with
rehearsal videos of nearly every song on the album. (it also came with...
stickers!)

I'm betting the revenue from both of those legally-free-to-download releases
will be more than all the profit made from sales of CMX-format albums
combined.

~~~
yan
Because talented musicians, providing value to the consumer and intelligent
music marketing has very little to do with container formats.

edit: (totally off topic, but i can't wait to see them in NY the 25th. NIN is
my favorite band. Saw LiTS tour four times last year.)

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radley
_"Ours will be a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a brand
new look, with a launch page and all the different options. When you click on
it you're not just going to get the 10 tracks, you're going to get the
artwork, the video and mobile products."_

We call it... CD-ROM.

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absconditus
The idea of some kind of standardized method to bundle audio tracks, liner
artwork, etc. is a good idea. If they are planning to use something other than
MP3 and/or FLAC for the audio tracks I can't see how this will succeed. Even
FLAC would be questionable because of iTunes/iPod support.

If one were to create such a standardized bundling format I can't imagine
spending more than a day developing it. The bundle itself should be something
simple like a ZIP file with a different extension. The audio files could be
MP3. The artwork could be PDF.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_If one were to create such a standardized bundling format I can't imagine
spending more than a day developing it._

But they didn't develop it: they almost certainly hired some IT consulting
firm who billed them six or seven figures and spent months (or years) coming
up with this ground-breaking innovation.

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jrockway
No thanks. All of this stuff already works with existing Mp3 and Ogg
containers. We don't really need a new format.

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ajg1977
I would love to know why they think this has any chance of success without the
support of the iTunes eco system.

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yan
Someone will definitely write a tool to extract raw audio from this DRM'ed
sausage of a format.

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maukdaddy
Knowing the labels they're going to price it more expensively than a normal
album. I'm betting on $20.

~~~
awaken
Yeah, but that's just because of the expense of a new media type. As the media
becomes cheaper to duplicate, I'm sure the price will drop...

Wait...

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trafficlight
They never learn from past mistakes.

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dtf
In case you're wondering how this could get any sorrier: U2 will be involved
in the "soft-launch".

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jmtame
might as well call it exe...

~~~
J_McQuade
But surely that's assuming it'll only work on Windows...

... oh, wait. Carry on.

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Tiktaalik
Apple working on their own format? Mmmm I love lock-in.

