Last week, newspapers raised cautious eyebrows at the music industry's proposed new digital formats – either Project Cocktail, backed by the almighty Apple, or CMX, the version being feverishly developed by the four major record conglomerates (Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI). Having been a drone in the industry for a decade and a half, I'd probably shift my money away from the four majors.
These enhanced downloads will basically offer the CD booklet in pixelated form on your listening device. Not much is known about Apple's format, but of CMX, an insider said: "When you click on it you're not just going to get the 10 tracks, you're going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products." Call me old-fashioned, but it's hardly William Miller pulling a treasure trove of well-loved vinyl from under his bed in Almost Famous with his sister's words "It'll set you free" echoing in his ears.
The problem is that the dam broke a long time ago. When some kid invents a code-cracking program – be it Napster, Pirate Bay, whatever – labels are left floundering for a solution. I've sat around in digital marketing meetings where someone whose vision of the bright future is just one copy of Wired ahead of you tries to work out how to minimise the impact of a record that has just leaked. Invariably, the solution is a shrug of the shoulders. This is the industry that backed Spotify, that magical world where everything is at your fingertips and you never need buy another record ever. Oh wait, that last bit …
Any all-bells-and-whistles digital format will surely appeal only to the usual suspects: the people who have been abused into buying the same records time and again when a new deluxe format is released. I'm talking about Uncut readers with spare cash who eagerly await the day when the Beatles catalogue finally gets digitised. (Would anyone be too shocked if these formats coincided with such a seismic last roll of the dice as the remasters of the Fab Four's albums, due this autumn?)
Apple's refusal to endorse CMX is another fine example of who now wears the trousers. It's sleek machines that produce jealous gasps from friends, not new CDs. And Apple, those lovable hippies from the west coast, appear to be going about brand protection in the right way, if rumours of disallowing a Spotify app for the iPhone are to be believed. Why the hell would they do anything else?
