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Apple and EMI announced that starting in May, the entire EMI catalog would become available in two versions on Apple's iTunes Store: the existing $0.99, 128kbps DRM-encased version and a new, 256kbps version with no DRM applied for $1.29.
The announcement mentioned that the higher quality, premium songs will be sold in the AAC format. It all sparked up a Web-wide debate in which many things are discussed, but few correct facts are presented.
After reading through the comments on Newsvine, Engadget and private mailing lists I'm in, I've noticed one thing in particular: there's a lot of misconception about AAC. So much so, it seems, that even one of the most prominent Newsviners, Brian Ford, known largely for his well-researched arguments, misses the mark on an AAC-related statement. Update: I'm not saying Brian doesn't know AAC, because he does. He just made an oopsy and I wanted to tease him by pointing it out.
So, what started out as a mere comment on the big EMI/Apple announcement thread became such a comprehensive comment that I felt it deserved a post of its own. Please forgive me for taking on a lecturing tone for a while here and present some clarity on AAC.
Claim:
AAC is still a proprietary format, so the non-iPod using part of the world doesn't actually benefit from this move by EMI and Apple
Wrong. AAC is a more open format than MP3 because it doesn't require you to pay royalties for content distribution, only for codec creation (in other words, if you sell MP3 music you have to pay a royalty for each song, but you don't have to pay anything if you sell AAC music)
Claim:
AAC is Apple's private codec
Wrong. AAC was made by various companies, most notably Sony, AT&T and Nokia, and is the preferred and approved format of MPEG — the Moving Picture Experts Group — and has been since 1997. I'm not 100% sure that Apple didn't contribute at all, but it's a far stretch to link AAC directly to Apple.
Claim:
Zune doesn't play AAC
Wrong. The Zune already supports AAC, and there's no reason whatsoever to think it'll drop support — in fact, now that iTunes content can play on Zunes, Microsoft would be wise to use that in their marketing for the Zune.
Claim: Apple's just going from one proprietary format (Fairplay) to another (AAC)
Wrong. aside of already having pointed out that AAC is actually an open standard, iTunes' Fairplay tracks are actually AAC songs already, they are merely encased in the Fairplay DRM which gives them a different file extension (which really doesn't mean much anyway). Apple has used AAC for its online music for years, but people somehow forgot about that.
Claim:
all companies besides Apple and Sony can't offer to play AAC songs
Wrong. We may never know the real reason companies like Creative and iRiver don't currently support AAC, but unless their contracts with Microsoft on PlaysForSure prohibits them, there's nothing stopping them from offering AAC support — save for a one-time patent license fee to MPEG. However, a result of their lack of AAC-support has produced this public perception that AAC stands for something like "Apple Audio Coding", which is utterly incorrect. It stands for Advanced Audio Coding and is in no way attributed to or owned by Apple.
In fact, the closest involvement Apple may have to AAC is their close bond with MPEG as a body, thanks to Quicktime. MPEG opted to go with Quicktime for their newer standards' video container formats because, unlike all of Microsoft's randomly rehashing formats for audio and video, Quicktime has actually been a stable and backwards compatible technology going back to 1991 and enjoyed constant improvements for over a decade-and-a-half. Nowadays, AAC is an audio codec format that can reside in Quicktime's .MOV container format natively, but that's actually not that noteworthy because most everything can reside in .MOV containers.
Then, people have raised the question of why Apple isn't using OGG or MPC, reportedly superior codec formats to AAC.
For OGG: because MPEG is unlikely to ever make an open source format part of its official MPEG-standard as that would open up a true Pandora's box of legal issues across the entire multimedia industry. Plus, OGG is tainted by potentially looming patent troubles.
For MPC: the MPC format didn't even exist when MPEG adopted AAC as their new audio standards in 1997. What reason would Apple have to go for a slightly superior open source codec without any established value or business merit, compared to a well-established, MPEG-approved codec developed by various companies and which is owned by a standards body, rather than a few individuals?
When it comes down to it, AAC is by far the most logical choice for any online Music Store to deliver content in. It offers strong technical improvements over the much-older MP3 format (which, admittedly, has shown to be a very robust format nonetheles) and has the huge benefit of being royalty-free when it comes to content distribution. The fuss people are making over it is, in one word, silly. In a few more words, it's a misguided channeling of a bunch of wrong information that is lingering in the back of people's minds.
A shame, really, because what happened here today is that the music industry has seen a massive shift, the likes of which it hasn't seen since the launch of the iTunes Music Store in 2003. The silly AAC debate is distracting people from noticing that we've entered — toes first and with hesitation, admittedly — a new age wherein DRM on online music is no longer limited to the small independent labels. A message has been sent to music and movie studios worldwide, and the message is that consumers don't want DRM.
Come May, consumers will hopefully reinforce this message, solidifying it with undeniable evidence of the fact by buying some DRM-free content on the iTunes Store — even if only to make a statement.
I know I will.
