It’s fair to say that the record industry has beautifully screwed itself over with advancing technology. As much as they may own the facility that creates the music, its digital distribution has been taken squarely out of their hands. Like their past efforts to catch up, the large music companies are once again banding together to try and figure out a solution…about five years too late.
That new solution is called CMX, a new file format that bundles together an entire album with a host of other digital content, including album artwork, videos, liner notes and ringtones. Basically, they’re going to try to leverage the extra content to compel buyers to shop for full albums, instead of singles (as Apple has successfully promoted with iTunes).
Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are all together on the scheme, which hopes to steer people away from the cherry-picking of songs that has become the norm for digital music sales. Never mind, of course, that pulling people away from a cheap solution that they’ve now become accustomed to, in exchange for a more expensive one has never really been a sound business idea.
If the recording industry can force a stop on all single track sales, it would probably make sense to buy the album (as we used to do with LPs, tapes and CDs, back in the day). Unfortunately, iTunes operator Apple isn’t too keen on the format, leaving the labels to fight the losing (well, presumably) and tasteless (my opinion) battle all by themselves.
According to rumors, Apple has not only rejected CMX, but is also developing a similar format of their own called Cocktail. As attractive as an extra-content album may be, who the hell wants it when you can pull down tons of the same that are both free and legal? Pfffft.
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