In an Irish radio interview, Bono discusses his various collaborations with Apple, as transcribed by TUAW. Interesting, Bono claims Apple now has 885 million iTunes accounts (up from 800 million as officially announced in April). With his work on a mysterious new music format, he aims to help Apple cross the billion accounts mark. The new medium has apparently been underway for a while, spanning back to a conversation with Steve Jobs in 2009.
So 5 years ago I began a conversation with Steve Jobs at my house in France and I said to Steve: “How is it that for a person who cares about the way things look and feel more than anyone else in the world that iTunes looks like a spreadsheet?” He was not happy. That was before they managed to even get a full screen photograph up. So he made a promise to me that we would work on this together, and with the team at Apple we’ve been doing it for years, and it’s not ready yet for Songs of Innocence, it will be ready for Songs of Experience. And it’s very exciting.
Although most of the interview focuses on the intricacies of the album, it also touches on streaming music and also on the Apple-U2 blunder. Bono says that the negative public reaction was overhyped and that internet journalism are just ‘haters’. On behalf of Apple, he apologises that the album automatically downloaded onto user’s devices (via Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud and Automatic Download features) as this was not intentional.
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Yea right. Mysterious new music format. I’m sure.
They are going to roll out lossless 24bit 96Hz audio and pretend like they invented it.
looks like you have all the answers around here. tell us, enlightened one, or better, tell apple, what should be done?
Relax. I despise Bono, and everything about him. I kills me that Apple continues to have anything to do with such an unhinged sociopath.
Apple is going to do a GOOD thing by rolling out 24 bit lossless audio to the masses (the one last way to resell the same music to people). I’m just put off by the possibility (likelihood) that Bono has anything to do with it.
haha i think that much is clear, you despise bono, but it looks like we’ll see at least one more album released/worked with apple. i think the idea is to get something new and catchy to make people buy the whole package instead of just singles or stream the music. like the extras on a bluray, instead of just watching it on netflix, see where i’m going? and if this happens to be a lossless, popular, music format than could be implemented as the standard in the industry, go apple.
at the end of the day, it’s all about pr, and if apple wants to do business with u2 so be it. I’m sure you are aware that u2 had the biggest tour ever five years ago, and that they have more grammys than any other person/group, so not exactly an up and coming band or laughable fanbase. bono’s attitude toward everything can be liked or hated, but the guy does make an impression, so, again, more pr.
ps: kudos on not starting a shouting contest
Bono isnt seeking a new format to provide a better experience for listeners. He wants Apple to create something that cant be pirated. I am fully against pirating but I am quite certain based on his crusades against P2P software he is not seeking a better listening experience. He wants locked down audio.
Totally off base. That ship has sailed and sunk. U2 know this, Bono knows this, Steve knew it and Apple knows it. There’s no way to create a secure audio format now nor in the future that will have any meaningful adoption nor be able to impact the industry in terms of net positive cash-flow.
Pay attention to all the clues that are being spoon fed in all these talks and interviews. This is about the enjoyment of consumption and collection, not about security and rights management.
Yeah Bono cares about end user experience. Thats laughable. The guy is nothing but an activist now. He is no musician any longer. He wants control and you can take that to the bank. Tech is absolutely advanced enough to lock these audio types down. Apples running credit card transactions without credit card numbers, they can do more than you know
My exact thought reading this article. Between he and Jimmy Iovine, these guys are 2 of the most arrogant guys in the music industry. They will both be the people who did it on their own while at the same time having nothing to do with it. If they can actually roll it out as a consumer format, I will be impressed, and certainly leadership does deserve credit, but that won’t change my opinion of them.
No, they won’t try to act like they invented 24/96 audio, all they will say is that it’s Apple first time they’ve released it, but they won’t try to claim they invented it. I honestly don’t know if they will any time in the near future. The problem is that there simply isn’t that much to release. Here’s why.
1. All earlier recordings were originally done in analog tape and the recording industry has been very slow to converting this content to 24 Bit, so some of it is converted from DSD which many used for archive purposes or they converted to 16 Bit Redbook. To recover it costs money and it takes time to do this process. How much older analog content is in demand since most consumers don’t have 24 Bit playback on their mobile devices or even computers.
2. It wasn’t until MAYBE over the past 10 to 12 years have studios recorded the original tracks at 24 Bit resolutions since most studios didn’t want to deal with large file sizes, so most of the recordings that were recorded in digital format were done at 16 Bit resolution. To upsample it doesn’t make much sense since it probably won’t sound dramatically different, but if they removed audio compression, that would make a bigger impact.
3. Only recently have recordings been tracked at 24 Bit and it’s not the majority of the content on the market. I think in order for Apple to start releasing 24 Bit files, they would also have to release products with built in 24 Bit DACs, but that remains to be seen.
4. The majority of people aren’t going to spend more money just because it’s 24 bit, Apple will probably have to charge $17 to $25 an album rather than $10 to $13 for a 16 Bit AAC version. How many people are going to pay more money for a larger file size that takes up more storage, plus the increased cost difference? I don’t see the masses doing this, a smaller niche market segment already does this, but it’s a VERY small portion of the market.
5. If you look at HD Tracks, they might have about 2,000 albums that are being sold at 24 Bit level, but that’s teeny tiny amount compared to the hundreds of thousands of albums released in 16 Bit.
I see it more as a supply/demand and cost issue and nothing else.
Interesting tidbits.
How about a format with great metadata and the feature of some codecs where you could have a lossless music and compressed music in the same container. Liner notes (in digital form and HTML5) could be embedded and infinitely updated (tour schedules and more). Do the right thing and keep the album prices sane and they could have something here.
I was into iTunes albums until once again the industry got greedy and album prices in some cases rose to $13. For heavily compressed music? No thanks.
Stop being greedy, stop being lazy with the art, leverage technology well and perhaps people will value the product enough to go back to buying albums.
Exactly my thoughts. A format that would contain not only music but other types of media for true interactive music listening. Music is an old format for the current devices since they do much more, like the examples you said.
If Apple takes all that Beats Music has accomplished, with this new file format they will have something great. The metadata will be one component of it. I see this new format working with other content as well. From music videos to Apple Pay used to buy concert tickets through the Music app. There is no denying that the new format will add in things like lyrics, tempo, beat, charting, listens, shares, video views, concert sales and so on. I see all of this new info providing Beats Music with even more power to create the best listening experience. I see all of this new format driving people back to experiencing whole albums, just like Bono said. I don’t know if Apple will use this new format in their traditional sales model. That may have been the plan when they started working on this project, but they clearly changed their minds when they acquired Beats. It seems that the end game is to take iTunes, iTunes Radio and Beats and create one great Apple product. Now as this new product runs on a subscription service, they’ll still always offer outright purchasing – whether desired by the mainstream, is a different story.
For some time now, it has been clear that Apple will adopt at minimum a lossless format that is also compressed. Currently, Apple’s lossless file type can compress to 40 to 60 of original file size. Though, Apple is likely leaning towards a 24bit 96Hz audio High-Definition file type that takes up only 10% of the space currently needed. This is evident with their patents to use the lightning connector as an audio jack. It will allow them to reproduce high-fidelity audio and get rid of the 3.5mm jack in one fell swoop. I don’t think we’ll see this anytime this year. I think this will probably be announced at WWDC in June 2015; to launch alongside the next iOS and OS X device updates. As it stands Apple has to replace the 3.5mm jack, update iTunes, update Airplay – probably one of the undiscussed benefits of peer-to-peer wireless for AirPlay, update iOS, replace the current EarPods and so on. It will come. Apple will lead.
Here is the backstory.
Early 2009, Bono insults iTunes, Steve’s feelings hurt
Late 2009, Apple unveils iTunes LP album format (HTML/CSS)*
(iTunes LP only worked inside iTunes on a Mac or PC)
2010, Apple introduces iPad and everyone forgets about iTunes LP
2011, Steve dies, iTunes business is put on cruise control because Apple has bigger fish to fry.
2014, Apple acquires Beats, Jimmy Iovine takes iTunes of cruise control
late 2015, Apple introduces iTunes LP 2.0 (Albums are interactive apps made with Xcode)
(iTunes LP 2.0 will only work on iOS devices because it is designed for touch)
This has nothing to do stoping music piracy.
This has everything to do with making consumers want to buy albums.
You will still be able to buy individual songs.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_LP
Well, it’s organized by the metadata that’s in each file and how the customer wants it displayed. How else are you going to organize your content? Bono is kind of an idiot when it comes to organizing data, heck, the guy can’t even put out an album without the use of excessive amounts of signal processing and audio compression.
Not as sensational as The Joshua Tree, but I still clicked on that cloud icon and the album is now ensconced on no less than 4 of my iDevices…
I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or cut off my nose to spite my freaking face.
How much hair is The Edge hiding under his perpetual hat?
probably none.