Neil Young Working on iTunes-Alternative Digital Platform

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 2, 2008 - 9:51am.

London - Unsatisfied with the sound quality of MP3 and other current digital audio formats, veteran rocker Neil Young has been talking with record companies on "licensing an alternative digital platform that he had been working on -- something, he claimed, of far higher quality that could provide an alternative to the download world and perhaps even a new business model for music," the Financial Times reported.

Young told FT he has been experimenting for the past 15 years with new technologies.

"[The MP3 alternative] has every media component you could want, and they're all married together in a platform. That means other artists could use it, other record companies could use it and gain the knowledge of our 15-year development curve," Young told FT.com.

Young recently announced plans to release his entire catalog on Sony's Blu-ray Disc format -- evidence that he is keen on seeing his work released in high-fidelity formats.

Meanwhile, fellow veteran rocker and producer T-Bone Burnett has also been working on a new, higher-fidelity digital audio format, "CODE," which will first be used on John Mellencamp's forthcoming album due out later this month on the Hear Music imprint.

 

Related Links:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb1e7eba-47d0-11dd-93ca-000077b07658.html

Comments

It's called lossless audio, already been done

I do not see the benefits of yet another lossless audio format called "CODE". We have Apple Lossless, Windows Media Lossless and the quite popular leading alternative codec to mp3 called FLAC. Most high-end audio manufacturers have already implemented FLAC (24bit & 16 bit) into their product lines (Think Linn, McIntosh, Escient). I find this story telling me that there is yet another waste of time on part of making yet another codec. If mp3 is already standard, we'll need a lossless standard. My litmus test of the market seems to say that the high-end is leaning and depending on the existing FLAC codec technology. The high-end sets the trends, and it is indeed where the music matters.

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