Will The MP3 Lose Its Monopoly?
There have been rumblings of a new contender in the digital audio file format monopoly.
Created by the Korean company Audizen and marketed as “Music 2.0,” the MT9 is far more complex than the MP3. The MP3 is just a compressed file. The MT9 has 6 “channels” for each instrument and vocal. You can turn up the volume on one instrument, while turning down the volume on another.
The hidden benefit of this format is taking out the vocals. This will allow you to turn any song into a karaoke song. And you know how big karaoke has become.
Google Trends shows the sudden surge of searches for MT9.
With all this said, the format actually has mountains to climb:
- Audizen must find a way for current MP3 players, like iPods, to play MT9s if this format is to have any chance.
- Can you imagine the possible DRM issues with this (public karaoke)?
- How large will these files be? 6x? Will we be able to compress it?
- Re-mastering previous recordings may be expensive and time consuming.
My opinion is that MT9 will not be able to replace MP3. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market. This could be a niche worth getting into.
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5 Responses to “Will The MP3 Lose Its Monopoly?”
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Real audiophiles will love it, I agree that the masses will probably stick with mp3, it’s simple and effective, but there are those of us who love to tweak and modify, I’ll also keep an eye on this one, thanks for the heads up.
I reg’d a couple and will see what happens in 3 years.
I agree, it’s going to to take a lot to kill MP3’s, and although I’m never too quick to knock advancements in creative technologies, I must ask, why would an artist, band, orchestra, or sound engineer want users to have the ability to manipulate their fine tuned creations?
I’m all about the re-mix/mash creative-commons culture, but I can’t foresee droves of talent (or rights holders) aligning themselves with the MT9 technology just to make available the native sound files (which include all the layers, tracks and filters) of their hard work. There’s too much that could be jacked with and taken entirely out of context.
Again, I’m not saying MT9 won’t be attractive to some artists, but I currently can’t see any lucrative reasons for an entire industry to embrace it.
The MT9 technology sounds like a consumer trend with no real hope for a wider substantiation by the music community and offers very little incentive for artists to merit an international standardization.
With a vested interest in the new music industry, I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on MT9 and similar file types. It sounds very interesting with all kinds of possibilities and less restrictions which could inspire the next wave of music makers.
What’s not to like about that…
http://www.mt9hits.com/
I think some artists would be willing to do this, while some already have. Metallica did something very near to this on their S&M DVD. You could tune out the symphony or the band.
Other bands that I could see getting in on this would be Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Pearl Jam, Green Day and Radiohead. Just speculation
But you are right Jamie, many would likely go against it.
Who knows? It could be the next CD or mini-CD (mini-CD was not a complete failure).
Thanks for the comments guys.
Well, how true the previous comments are… as I found an alternative technology that does just the same and more, to answer some of the above questions.
There is this multitrack audio format: iklax, that has an inbuilt constraint system for artists to control how their music is listened to. Its truly uplifting to enter the tracks in such a simple way.
There seems to be difficulties for the creators of the format to find bands… as they have set up an artists/band community site on http://www.iklaxmusic.com
Enjoy everyone!