I doubt they're talking about a new encoding format or anything like that. If I had to guess, I would be thinking more about something like the recentish NiN album that came with Garageband files so that you could remix the music yourself. Or which provides synchronised lyrics embedded in the music, or something like that.
Not to mention sales of music downloads are tanking through the floor. Consumption is predominantly streaming now, and that's the way people like it.
I simply don't see any static, local file format succeeding regardless of DRM-encumbrance. It's simply less useful to mainstream users than the streaming equivalent.
The battle isn't about which format your files should be in, it's about whether or not you have any files at all.
That and/or "high definition", "above CD quality" digital audio.
There's a lot of noise in the digital music industry about high quality audio at present. U2 may be following in Neil Young's PONO footsteps.
There may be doubt whether high quality audio can deliver what it promises - i.e. an improvement over MP3 320 that is noticeable to normal people's ears. But the Pono kickstarter proves beyond any doubt that there's money it it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-wh...
The recording industry have tried the "above CD quality" thing to get people to re-buy their music several times before. Each time it flopped, and I fail to see why this time will be different.
The older members of the music-listening public are more likely to be audiophiles and have more money to throw at kickstarters from classic rockers. They are a bit slower to adopt new technologies, but are now fairly well on board with iPods and MP3s. However their ears aren't always high definition any more.
The younger members of the music-listening public don't really bother so much with the concept of "owning" music. It's like fresh air – so long at it's streaming at you, it's good and who cares about owning it.
No mass market for buying high-definition audio downloads is to be found in either category.
From TFA, it sounds like they might finally understand the dynamics of piracy and drm:
"Bono tells TIME he hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music"
Stopping piracy isn't accomplished by punishing users, its done by making legitimacy easier/more appealing in the first place.
However, if it's truly irresistibly exciting, but $1.29 per song, that implies DRM, as one can safely assume the exciting aspect is not the act of purchasing the music.
Why would it be? iTunes tracks started transitioning to DRM-free 7 years ago - as far as I can see from some quick research they were one of if not the first music store offering DRM free music from any of the major labels, and absolutely gave immense weight to the DRM-free push before many of the current competing services even existed.
So, if your comment is going to follow the typical apple bashing, history ignoring model, just don't bother.
Some potential ideas
- pay per listen, local cache
- embedded lyrics, photos
- extra sound bytes (exclusive to track owners)
- optional videos
- asynchronous Comms with the band: FAQs. News, interviews, etc
There are many things you can do that link purchased content with other content. Adding lyrics that appear in realtime would also be handy.
My ideas are now patented. Pay me 5% of all future sales please... Isn't that how patents work? State the obvious and rake in cash for doing very little?
I'm pretty sure mp3/aac can already store lyrics in the metadata. Most of the songs on my iPod have lyrics with them that show up while playing, though they don't sync with the music, it's just the full text. And these are songs from other sources like Bandcamp or CDs, so it's not some iTunes/Apple specific feature.
