The Format Wars

By Ronnie Rocket

While the movie industry is still fighting it out on (the last) physical media (newsflash: Blu-Ray won), the struggling music industry now has an interesting new front being fought in the US.

I am a faithful subscriber to the Rhino newsletter (Do you rock out to Led Zeppelin? Do you cry when you listen to Joy Division? Do you secretly enjoy the songs of Barry Manilow? I think you do.) and this morning it contained a Bee Gees promotion.

"Bee Gees Go Digital", it says. As you may know, some of popular music's biggest names have yet to surface in digital formats - The Beatles apparently had a problem with putting their catalogue for sale on iTunes, while still fighting about the rights for the Apple trademark name - but recently powerhouses like Led Zeppelin have released their attractive catalogues digitally. Now is the time for another monster act. You may not know this, but it has been estimated that the Bee Gees' record sales total more than 220 million, easily making them one of the best-selling music artists of all-time. Read again: more than 220 million records.

Re-issue specialist Rhino - a record label co founded by Richard Foos and Harold Bronson in 1978. beginning with novelty records, since 1998 a part of Warner Music Group - is putting out the entire Bee Gees catalogue in digital formats. What is interesting about this, besides the availability of the pop goldmine ("How Deep Is Your Love", "More Than A Woman", the list is endless), is the choice of formats. In the newsletter, there are deep links to iTunes and to Internet commerce first mover Amazon.com, who is now selling music as MP3's (so far, only in the U.S.). This is the new front: iTunes' 'closed' AAC format vs. Amazon's 'open' MP3 format. It will be interesting to follow this battle in 2008.

Of course you can mix these formats in most players, but it is a messy affair. You can't create mixed iMixes and the experience is just not as streamlined as it should be.

Which format do you prefer? Leave a comment, please. [Sorry. You have to have a Google account to do so, but an OpenID will do the job soon].

Oh, and while the hardware industry and the entertainment companies are fooling around with the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, DivX is really taking off as the de facto digital standard for movie playbacks. Read: make sure your playback system can handle this format of the future. And always remember: the future is now.

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