Rumored: Apple Lossless Songs on iTunes?

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on June 27

This would be interesting: Songs sold on the iTunes Music Store in Apple Lossless format. As anyone who’s into downloading FLAC, SHN and WAV files can tell you, lossless formats sound better than “lossy” formats like AAC and MP3. But they take up more space and as such take longer to download. Now an interesting rumor over at AppleInsider suggests that something around Apple Lossless format is happening. The big clue in all this is a new version of iTunes Producer that allows music to be encoded directly into Apple Lossless format. Though the format doesn’t currently work with Fairplay, Apples digital rights management technology I don’t see how that couldn’t change.

But here’s an interesting idea: There’s already an active community of music lovers who trade recorded concerts in lossless formats online — couldn’t Apple do something in the area of concert downloads and use Apple Lossless to do it?

Some concerts could even be free — there are dozens of acts that already allow fans to record their shows so long as they’re traded without money changing hands. Apple would have to serve the files of course. But other acts could sell exclusive live performances through iTunes and create a recurring revenue stream for shows years after the tour is ended. If a favorite artist of mine were on tour and I missed seeing a show, I’d pay $20 or so for a download that I can play on the iPod. Wouldn’t you?

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/