SanDisk, Music Publishers Push DRM-free SlotMusic Format

Strudelkugel writes "The LA Times and others are reporting the music industry is working with SanDisk to try unrestricted music files on microSD memory cards to improve sales of physical media: 'In addition to music, the slotMusic cards will come pre-loaded with other things, such as liner notes, album-cover artwork and sometimes video.' The important part: 'The music on slotMusic comes without copyright protection, so it can be used on almost all computers, mobile phones and music players — but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.' Could it be the labels have finally recognized that providing features and convenience to customers is preferable to suing them?" Most computers also don't have microSD slots; according to EMI's press release, there will be a "tiny USB sleeve" packaged with each card, and the "high quality" format means up to 320kbps MP3. From the given description, it seems like it would be no harder to transfer the tracks to an iPod (via a computer) than to most other players.

I want real High Quality

I don't want a memory stick containing lossy 320kbit songs, I can get that easily enough off the CD (they are still giving you a real CD, right?).

Why not include a 24-bit 192 or 96 khz lossless format, and maybe something in 5.1 instead? DVD-Audio and SACD didn't take off because no one adopted the players, but it might take off if you made it easily playable. I might even pay a slight premium.

Re:I want real High Quality

It's probably to minimize the space required. They don't want half the price of the card be the cost of the card itself after all. Also a 320kbps mp3 can be played by pretty much any mp3 player out there, unlike most lossless compression formats.
Besides, most people (including me) can't hear the difference between 320 kbps lossy and lossless.

Re:I want real High Quality

Audio CDs are generally encoded as 48khz, 16bit, 1411kbps PCM audio

Minor correction, audio CDs are encoded with a sample rate of 44.1khz, not 48khz.

Around the time of the initial development of CDs, audio was often stored using video recorders, since hard drives were an impractical choice back then. 44,100 samples per second suited both the NTSC and PAL formats, so this format was common at the time, and that's why this non-round number was originally chosen for the CD format too.

Re:I want real High Quality

"But pretty much anyone with decent equipment *can* hear the difference between 24bit and 16bit, or 48khz and 96khz."

Lots of people who pay large sums for audio equipment _claim_ they can hear such differences despite the fact that the original source signals from the best microphones in the world don't produce any useful information above 22KHz and have signal / noise ratios of 90db or less, so there won't be any extra musical information that requires the higher frequency response and dynamic range provided by more bits and higher sampling frequencies.

Studios use high sampling rates and word sizes (192 KHz 32-bit) because multiple tracks can act as input to other tracks, which means that noise accumulates, and positional differences of high frequency bits in lower sampling rates can combine to produce artefacts (both of these can and do also occur when mixing multiple tracks down). Neither of these is a factor in domestic listening however, because _any_ system below the native studio resolution of 192 KHz 32-bit will end up being dithered down using the same algorithms (often on the same hardware).

"That is a pretty well established fact"

Established by whom? Double-blind listening tests indicate that there's no objective difference between them on any level of equipment when they're only being used to play back pre-recorded sources, irrespective of the musical genre being used to evaluate them. There's plenty of psycho-acoustical information to indicate that rise-times in waveforms above the upper threshold of human hearing can have a notable effect on the way it's perceived, but the inability of microphones used in music recording applications to transduce those frequencies into useful signals means that it's of academic rather than practical interest (some microphones such as the ones used in bat detectors can respond to extremely high frequencies, but they have other characteristics that make them useless for recording music signals).

"Audio CDs are generally encoded as 48khz, 16bit, 1411kbps PCM audio"

The audio on digital video is recorded at 48KHz. CDs are 44.1 KHz.

"For comparison, get one of the few albums available in DVD Audio and compare them to the CD - especially at high volumes. "

You'll need one of the even fewer DVD Audio albums that isn't up-sampled and re-mixed from a 44.1 KHz 16 bit master, and therefore actually has some chance of containing real extra musical information that isn't on the CD version to make such a comparison valid, otherwise any perceivable differences will be nothing more than artefacts of the up-sampling and re-mastering process.

Re:I want real High Quality

Why not include a 24-bit 192 or 96 khz lossless format, and maybe something in 5.1 instead?

Why? Because most people don't care. People who listen to ipods, buy from itunes, rip their own cds with crappy compression, and mainly listen to their music with $5 headphones, can't tell the difference between a lossless format and the common, lossy formats. That applies to the majority of consumers. Very little demand for anything better than 320kbps mp3 or aac or whatever. I like flac for archiving, personally, but I also often convert to a mediocre mp3 format for portability with my Palm Treo.

Re:5.1 ?

excuse me but are you clueless about music?

Insulting people (by stating or implying they are clueless) is generally not a good way to get positive moderation. Just thought you might want to have more karma to burn ;)

Also, the question you're addressing is not music (composition and performance), but recording, playback and auditory perception (production, HiFi, sound).

The number of speakers, or surround do not determine the quality of music.

True. Because music is composition and performance. In fact, the two are orthogonal; I've recently auditioned for a band and I quite liked their recorded songs even though the production on average was (gently put) not on par with commercial music.

The number of speakers does affect some dimension of the quality of what you're going to perceive. I've found that I even when I'm just listening to stereo, I want to have sound coming from behind me in addition to in front; whether it's the bigger, better speakers in the back (should be easy to test) or just the sound coming from all directions, it is subjectively more pleasant to listen to.

Also, if you do have real surround sound (even just 4.0), you can do nifty tricks like putting the drummer in the back, guitar and base subtly to either side and vocals in center/front. I'd think this makes each instrument more distinguishable while not destroying the integration into one auditory whole.

But I'm not audiophile, I just like having four speakers and sound coming from all directions.

Children's music.

But I'm not audiophile, ...

They all say that until someone finds children's music on their computer!

Re:5.1 ?

Stereo, for example, was invented to create more space for sounds in a recording.

No, it wasn't. Stereo is used to recreate the spatial component of music: when you record a number of instruments sitting at different positions in the studio, you should be able to hear where those instruments are. That has nothing to do with 'too many waveforms ...cramped together on the same output'.
In fact, in a stereo recording, most of the information will be played back by both speakers.
It is possible to make a recording where the left and right channels have nothing in common, but you'll find that those sound very unnatural, so these recordings are (thankfully) rare. It's like having half the musicians on the far left of the stage, and the other half on the far right, with nobody in the center.

Re:No they dont

you need different ranges assigned to different speakers that can give out that frequencies. but, there has to be more of the same speakers assigned to a particular frequency range - lets say, you got a certain size of tweeter. if there are 4 of this, and you divide a small incremental range of high frequency sound to four of these in small increments, you'll have, say, seperated two sopranos' (each soprano will have differences in their frequencies, even if minute and hardly identifiable by human ear) voices to two tweeters of the SAME kind, but while playing these two sopranos' voices, each of their voices will come from the different tweeters. this will increase the distinctiveness of each sound. here, the quality of the tweeters matter VERY much.

Nonsense. No audio system works like that.
1. you can't separate two voices or two instruments like this, because each voice produces a range of frequencies that mostly overlaps. They'll sound different because their harmonic spectrum (the relative volume of each harmonic) differs a bit, but there is no filter that can separate them.
2. A loudspeaker box usually contains a few drivers of different sizes, because the driver size needs to be matched more or less to the frequency. A 12" bass driver is too heavy to produce 10 kHz, conversely a 1" tweeter can't move enough air to produce convincing bass. The challenge is to use no more drivers than necessary, because dividing the frequency spectrum like this introduces all kinds of problems. The holy grail of loudspeaker design is the point source: a single point that can produce the entire spectrum.

The only reason loudspeaker arrays are used, is volume. Multiple parallel drivers can produce more volume than a single driver.
There are some interesting side effects to arrays. The dispersion pattern changes a bit, which can be beneficial if done right. But 'a sound stage that encompasses you'? No. That's due to the surfeit of power which sets up reverberations in the hall. You get the same effect cranking up your non-array home stereo.

Re:I want real High Quality

You know, I'm in my mid forties and I grew up with scratchy LP's and compact cassettes. I recall buying LP's and "ripping" them to tapes so that I didn't have to keep handling and playing the LP in an attempt to maintain them in "pristine condition". I've still got those LP's too.

The trouble was that compact cassettes sounded like crap, even when you lashed out and bought the "metal" ones. But we had no choice. You couldn't use LP's in the car so cassettes it was (8-Tracks never caught on in Australia so please refrain from telling me about how they were much better than CC)

Fast forward 30 years and my main problem with music these days is that IT IS MOSTLY CRAP!

To my aging ears, MP3's sound way better than cassette tapes ever did even at 128Kbs. Most of my 120Gb collection is ripped in 128-192K MP3 and I don't care. Most of the music I like was recorded in the analog days anyway, and besides, I'm sure my old ears aren't what they used to be.

128K MP3s still sound better than any cassette tape ever did so I'm happy.

Listening to 50 fucking cent pose and preen in 5.1 lossless audio? All I can say is not in my lifetime buddy.

I'll take an antique recording of Canned Heat, Peter Green or Alvin Lee @ 128Mb any day thanks.

Now, get off my damn lawn you goddamn whippersnappers!

Re:I want real High Quality

There's nothing a sampling frequency higher than 44.1 kHz will bring you since you cannot hear anything above 22 kHz.

Using 96kHz allows you to use a rather stupid filter which starts at say 30kHz and does 100% filtering only at 45kHz. Such a filter is almost certain to not cause any distortion below 20kHz. In contrast, with CD you have to use a filter which only has the range 20kHz to 22KHz to play with, which means you have to use a rather sophisticated filter (or make the cut-off frequency lower).

You can of course do the recording at 96kHz (or higher) and then downsample to 44.1kHz using a perfect digital filter.

Weird

Ok, let me get this straight. No copy protection so it will play on anything, but it won't play on iPods because they don't have a SD slot? WTF?! If there's no copy protection, then you put the songs on your computer and then sync them to the iPod. I love how these sorts of articles are written when the person writing them has never used a computer before.

Maybe...

My cell phone has a microSD slot, so I might consider *wince* buying music that way. But it would need to be at a reasonable price (I'd have to think more about at what price I would pay for this) and it would have to have music I didn't already have or couldn't acquire easier from other sources. I don't have an iPod (yeah I know, I'm one of those people), so that's not a problem for me. But I'm not sure I want to have a collection of 1GB microSD cards laying around. I have a hard enough time keeping track where my keys are.

At least they're finally trying to make something we want rather than forcing us to buy buggy whips though.

FINALLY!

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but the idea of buying music without in some way being able to damage the environment has been KILLING me.

Way to get on that EMI. Thank god!

awesome but...

we all know it'll only catch on if the porn industry start distributing on microSD as well.

"Tiny USB Sleeve"?

Great. More crap to throw out. Isn't one of the big selling features of digital distribution that it produces less crap to landfill?

No copyright protection == public domain

No copyright protection? So they are only releasing music that is in the public domain!?

Or did the newspaper screw up, and mean to write "no copy protection"?

Another Physical Distribution Method?

Kudos to EMI for doing something digital without DRM, but how is this better than what Amazon.com offers us now?

I can download DRM-free songs from Amazon for less than a buck, and albums at about $8. Windows Media Player downloads the album art, and a plug-in gets me lyrics. I can transfer the song to other devices, friends, or burn to CD. Amazon's library is HUGE.

And internet distribution doesn't impact the environment.

About the only advantage I see to this is the "up to 320k", whereas Amazon's are 160k I believe. But, I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference.

Physical distribution is dead. If they want to cater to impulse buyers at a retailer, install a kiosk with a variety of ports, card readers, BlueTooth, etc and let people download stuff instantly.

in the age of the internet...

...they have conceived of a method of using physical media to transport bits.  And they'll still charge $15 for an album.

You know, watching these guys over the last decade has been like watching a retarded child learning to go poo in the toilet.  They're six years old when they finally get it right, and then they look at you like they've just won the Olympics.

No disrespect to retarded children intended.

Re:in the age of the internet...

That's really unfair to retarded children to compare them to recording industry executives.

Uninformed Journalist

Ms. Quinn, the author of the Los Angeles Times article, is not a very good technology writer. She not only quotes that it won't work with iPods (which is terribly misleading; the microSD card won't, but the contained DRM-free MP3s will be very easy to work with), but she also refers to this as a "new music format".

Medium, yes; format, no. Distributing on the microSD cards is new, but seems like something people may latch onto quickly. MP3 is old and a de facto universal format, which is what makes this even better.

Is Micro-SD the right choice?

Am I thinking about the same micro-SD as everyone else? Smaller than my little finger nail?

It's small enough to get lost in your pocket, sucked up by a vacuum cleaner or whatever. They're also fiddly to handle: can you imagine picking through your album collection with a pair of tweezers, squinting at the 3mm x 5mm labels to find the one you're after?

It seems a bizzarre choice for a portable music medium. If they're not intended for carrying around but supposed to be used only once, to get the music onto your player/computer, why not just sell the download?

And what else ?

In addition to music, the slotMusic cards will come pre-loaded with other things, such as liner notes, album-cover artwork and sometimes video

And advertisements, rootkits, DRM schemes, spyware ...

Why is it every keydisk manufacturer thinks I want their crappy software to run every time I put a disk in the USB slot ? Sick of this nonsense, meaning your 2GB memory is actually only 1.8GB plus some non removable crap, and not one but 2 drive letters to deal with :-(

Re:What format is it distributed in?

Somehow I am a little doubtful, given that the article does not state which format the songs will be distributed in.

From the article:

Music, Retail and Tech Leaders to Offer "slotMusic(TM)": High Quality, DRM-Free MP3 Music on microSD(TM) Cards

My guess is, this is yet another "plays on most devices" that the record labels always cooks up

And your guess is wrong. This is genuinely good news, they're finally realizing that certain people will pirate regardless how inconvenient they make it.

Re:Still the same problem with buying CDs

Unfortunately, even bands with talent has record labels stuffing crap to fill up their CDs. Extremely few artists have 100% control of what is put on their CD.