{"id":277494,"date":"2011-02-22T12:10:14","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T12:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/02\/22\/apple-in-talks-to-improve-sound-quality-of-music-downloads\/"},"modified":"2011-02-22T12:10:14","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T12:10:14","slug":"apple-in-talks-to-improve-sound-quality-of-music-downloads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/02\/22\/apple-in-talks-to-improve-sound-quality-of-music-downloads\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div readability=\"176.561240095\"><!-- google_ad_section_start --><!-- CONTENT -->  <!-- REAP --><!--startclickprintexclude--><!--===========CAPTION==========--><\/p>\n<div readability=\"7\">\n<p>Apple is an industry leader in sales of both paid digital music and portable players.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--===========\/CAPTION=========--> <!--endclickprintexclude--><!-- \/REAP --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><b>STORY HIGHLIGHTS<\/b><\/p>\n<ul><!-- google_ad_section_start --><\/p>\n<li> The sound quality of songs offered in digital-download stores may improve<\/li>\n<li> Apple, other online music sellers talk with record labels about offering better-sounding files<\/li>\n<li> Some question whether consumers would be willing to pay a premium for these tracks<!-- google_ad_section_end --><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--endclickprintexclude--> <!--startclickprintinclude--> <\/p>\n<p><b>San Francisco (CNN)<\/b> &#8212; Apple and other digital music retailers are in discussions with record labels to improve the quality of the song files they sell, executives involved in the talks say.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, online music stores could eventually offer songs that sound truer to their original recordings, perhaps at a premium price.<\/p>\n<p>Professional music producers generally capture studio recordings in a 24-bit, high-fidelity audio format. Before the originals, or &#8220;masters&#8221; in industry parlance, are pressed onto CDs or distributed to digital sellers like Apple&#8217;s iTunes, they&#8217;re downgraded to 16-bit files.<\/p>\n<p>From there, the audio can be compressed further in order to minimize the time the music will take to download or to allow it to be streamed on-the-fly over the internet.<\/p>\n<p>Why don&#8217;t record labels at least give retailers the option of working from higher-grade recordings?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; Jimmy Iovine, a longtime music executive, asked rhetorically. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s not because they&#8217;re geniuses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>&#8216;Changing the pipes&#8217;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Iovine, in addition to being the chairman of Universal Music Group&#8217;s Interscope-Geffen-A&#038;M record label, has a venture with hip hop artist Dr. Dre called Beats Audio. The company designs high-end headphones and other audio equipment.<\/p>\n<p>Work from Beats Audio will be included in the upcoming TouchPad tablet computer from Hewlett-Packard. HP has sold 1 million laptops with Beats Audio technology.<\/p>\n<p>Iovine briefly discussed the topic of improving the caliber of music offered by download services onstage during a two-hour HP news conference unveiling the TouchPad and other products.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve gone back now at Universal, and we&#8217;re changing our pipes to 24 bit. And Apple has been great,&#8221; Iovine said. &#8220;We&#8217;re working with them and other digital services &#8212; download services &#8212; to change to 24 bit. And some of their electronic devices are going to be changed as well. So we have a long road ahead of us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A new high-end smartphone, called the Pre 3, was also announced at HP&#8217;s event. But the device only has mono speakers, according to technical specifications provided by HP.<\/p>\n<p>Many models of Mac computers can play 24-bit sound, and the iTunes program is capable of handling such files. But most portable electronics, and many computers, don&#8217;t support 24-bit audio. <\/p>\n<p>To make the jump to higher-quality music attractive for Apple, the Cupertino, California, company would have to retool future versions of iPods and iPhones so they can play higher-quality files.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Paul McCartney can master The Beatles albums all he wants, (but) when you play them through a Dell computer, it sounds like you&#8217;re playing them through a portable television,&#8221; Iovine said.<\/p>\n<p>Apple secured rights to begin selling The Beatles catalog in November as the exclusive digital retailer.<\/p>\n<p>Apple has upgraded the quality of its music catalog once before. In January 2009, the iTunes Store began offering most tracks in a bit-rate twice as high as its previous standard and free of copy-protection. Apple had piloted the program two years prior with music giant EMI.<\/p>\n<p>ITunes controls about 66% of the paid digital-download market. Amazon MP3 trails with 13%, according to research from the NPD Group.<\/p>\n<p>Apple and Amazon declined to comment for this story. Representatives for the big four record companies didn&#8217;t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>eMusic, a smaller digital retailer, is investigating whether customers would be willing to pay for higher-quality downloads, Adam Klein, the company&#8217;s CEO, said in a statement. <\/p>\n<p>The eMusic website recently began selling albums from major labels, including the Universal Music Group, which Iovine is negotiating on behalf of. Universal and eMusic executives have met regularly &#8220;to discuss future initiatives,&#8221; Klein said.<\/p>\n<p><b>The advent of streaming<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Sony Network Entertainment launched its subscription music-streaming service, called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2011\/TECH\/web\/02\/17\/sony.qriocity\/index.html\">Music Unlimited Powered by Qriocity<\/a>, in the United States and other countries on Thursday. The new company is owned by Sony, which also owns major label Sony Music Entertainment.<\/p>\n<p>Shawn Layden, Sony Network&#8217;s chief operating officer, said most people don&#8217;t care, or even notice, if their music is flawed. That is a common sentiment among industry watchers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The challenges of music right now &#8212; I don&#8217;t think the primary one is a quality issue,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Music lovers worldwide are mostly keen right now on the convenience of access &#8212; make it easier for me to have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Qriocity service streams music at 48 kilobits per second, Layden said. Current downloads from iTunes are more than five times higher in bit-rate quality. But Qriocity uses the latest methods of compression so the music still sounds good, he said. <\/p>\n<p>Regardless, offering premium-quality downloads could help a la carte retailers like iTunes hold on to valuable high-volume music fanatics. Otherwise, those customers could gravitate to the growing number of services &#8212; like Sony&#8217;s, Napster and others &#8212; that offer millions of streaming tracks for the monthly price of a single album.<\/p>\n<p>The initiative could also serve as a sparkplug for digital music sales in general. Worldwide revenue from paid downloads is flattening, as sales of physical CDs &#8212; another 16-bit format &#8212; continue to sink, according to a report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.<\/p>\n<p><b>Support from musicians<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Some notable music acts have broken from labels to handle their own distribution and have found a sound business in selling primo music files, usually to their most diehard fans.<\/p>\n<p>Renowned rock band Radiohead began selling digital versions of its new album on its website Friday. For $9, fans can download MP3 files in a higher bit-rate than what iTunes would offer, and for $14, they can get the uncompressed audio. A Radiohead representative didn&#8217;t respond to a question about preliminary sales.<\/p>\n<p>Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor released figures in 2008 for a record he produced by rapper Saul Williams. Back then, about 87% chose either the highest quality MP3 or the uncompressed format, the data shows. Reznor&#8217;s bands now usually offer high-fidelity versions of their own songs.<\/p>\n<p>For musicians who pore over every aural detail, the digital age can be frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Most of you aren&#8217;t hearing it the way it&#8217;s supposed to sound,&#8221; Dr. Dre said in a Beats Audio promotional video. &#8220;And you should &#8212; hear it the way I do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the HP event, Iovine summed up his mission and the purpose of this industry initiative.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we&#8217;re trying to do here is fix the degradation of music that the digital revolution has caused,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s one thing to have music stolen through the ease of digital processing. But it&#8217;s another thing to destroy the quality of it. And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening on a massive scale.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--endclickprintinclude--><!-- google_ad_section_end --><br \/>\n<!-- \/cnn_strybtmcntnt --><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read the original:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/rss.cnn.com\/~r\/rss\/cnn_showbiz\/~3\/-_3sZIu5ue8\/index.html\" title=\"Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Apple is an industry leader in sales of both paid digital music and portable players. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads - 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