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Formatwatch: Bono busy inventing something else nobody wants
You've got to hand it to Bono - just days after not realising nobody wanted his rump-reeking new record, even for free, he's coming up with another thing that people are neither seeking, nor requiring:
In a new Time magazine article, the singer has detailed the group's plans to help combat the illegal downloading of artists' music by creating a new file format which cannot be copied.Unless there's some magic way it doesn't need to pass audio to an output, let me stop you right there Bono and say it doesn't work.
But do carry on.
The aim of the top secret project is to tempt fans to purchase full albums, not just individual tracks, once more so new material will once again become profitable for artists who aren't big on touring.The problem here, Bono, is that 'bundling stuff into albums' is a thing that was convenient for labels and artists. It wasn't, ever, a thing that happened because music fans went to bed wishing that when they bought six songs they liked, they could get another four tracks they didn't like, and would never play.
Apple have already tried to resurrect the album format once - with the iTunesLP. That was meant to be an "immersive experience" with all sorts of extras which would make buying a bundle attractive again.
Nobody seems to have released one since last November's Justin Timberlake 20/20 Experience.
But, still, good luck, Bono.
3 comments:
Oooh another failed format yet to come. Got to love the industry endlessly trying to find a way to reinvent the glory days where a fool and their money were easily parted. Like watching a Roomba endlessly stuck in the same corner as its battery depletes. I believe the hype release used the words 'irresistibly exciting' to describe the format due in 18 months (already hampered surely by being linked to U2). Following the humiliation of actually having to create an easy to understand app/button to enable the mass removal of a 'free' U2 album you'd have thought they'd not want to tranish any as yet unborn new format with an association to the U2 brand. Unless of course somebody knows exactly what they're doing in order to throttle this one way before birth.
Actually, you might be on to something there
- "U2 are banging on again about how the tech companies don't do enough to stop piracy"
- "Hey, why don't we set Bono a special project to invent something that will stop piracy forever? That'd keep him quiet for a while - say, a year or so - and then, when it inevitably flops, we can say 'hey, at least we tried something Bono but even your brilliant brain couldn't fix the issue'"
Will it play on the Pono?
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