Internet service provider OzEmail’s Net music
channel Chaos Music Market (CMM) has released the first of 15 downloadable tracks using the Web’s latest audio technology, the MP4 format.
The tracks that have been released to mark the MP4 launch include work by
American musicians Public Enemy and David Crosby, and Australian performers
The Whitlams, TISM, and James Morrison.
The files can be downloaded for free from the CMM site, and when played
they display scrolling text messages, album cover art and a hyperlink to
the product point of sale.
“This is the best sound quality available on the Internet and we are proud
to be the first to bring it to Australians,” said Sean Howard, OzEmail’s chief executive
officer. “[It is] a technology which will shape the future of
the music business.”
As well as providing the music industry with a new Internet audio format,
MP4 may lend it some comfort. Unlike MP3, MP4 offers limited copyright
protection to musicians, making it a more attractive technology to use for
posting music on the Internet.
The program for creating MP3 files can be downloaded, meaning that anyone
can create files from CDs and distribute them over the Internet. By
contrast, only copyright holders will be given access to MP4 encoders to
record music to the MP4 format. In the case of copyright infringement the
files also contain digital signatures that may be used to trace their
origin.
Developed by US firm Global Music, MP4 is a self-playing digital quality audio file of around 3 to 4MB. The song files do not require a specific
player to be installed in order to run, but use Microsoft’s Windows
operating systems and currently can only be played on PCs.
