Music Now Has DNA

The creators of the MP3 (Bach Technology) are ready to once again change the way consumers obtain and experience music as they plan to create a successor to the MP3 with “MusicDNA”. The unveiling of this new technology was announced at MIDEM, a major music business trade show that addresses key issues and trends that are affecting all aspects of the music industry. According to Bach Technology’s CEO Stefan Kohlmeyer: “The MP3 was great for its time, but it did not support multimedia”, and now with MusicDNA they are able to do that by adding: lyrics, artwork, tour dates, merchandise, videos, and twitter feeds into this new format. Another good thing about MusicDNA is that it serves as a competitor towards illegal file-sharing because you can only receive this extra content if you obtain a legitimate format of MusicDNA.

I personally think this is a good idea because it gives record labels an innovative way to market music to consumers over the internet. They now have a stronger reason to entice consumers to buy music by making certain content (unreleased songs, ringtones, etc.) only available if you buy the MusicDNA format. I find this technology similar to the downloadable content game developers offer consumers through gaming platforms like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, which adds extra content to a videogame for more hours of game play. MusicDNA will do the same thing as they keep consumers intrigued in a song or album longer than a few months as extra content becomes available with each update.

The only bad thing I see is that it may cost more to buy this format than the original MP3. I think this format would most definitely spike up prices for entire albums, and consumers may find themselves spending $15-18 dollars (again) for albums. Only time will tell where Bach Technology will go from here, but if all goes well with their beta testing phase we can expect to see MusicDNA hit the digital-sphere by this summer.

Submitted by: Jarvis R. Smith

Sources
1. Music Week
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1039771&c=1

2. RollingStone
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/01/25/mp3-creators-unveil-new-music-file-format-musicdna/

MusicDNA Website
http://www.musicdna.info/