Here's the proposition: The record industry wants you to buy music on a new kind of disc. Unlike a CD, the format will greatly restrict your ability to make digital copies. It will cost more than a prerecorded CD. And it will require you to invest a few hundred dollars in a new player.
If the appeal isn't immediately apparent, you have some idea of the salesmanship task ahead.
The newly released portable music format, called DataPlay digital media, is the latest technology joining a cornucopia of choices for consumers to play their favorite tunes through headphones connected to palm-size devices. The discs, contained in a clear plastic shell, are about the size of the ring in the center of a CD, or about one-fourth the size of a minidisc. They will be available in blank, recordable form as well as prerecorded, copy-protected albums.
Because of that last feature, DataPlay is being embraced by major record labels. So far BMG, Universal Music and EMI Group have signed on, say officials for DataPlay of Boulder, Colorado, which developed the technology.
The first DataPlay music player-recorders went on sale recently, and waves of prerecorded DataPlay discs will soon wash into record stores, starting with re-releases of top-selling albums by the likes of Britney Spears, 'N Sync, Pink, Usher, OutKast, Sarah McLachlan and Brooks & Dunn, BMG record executives say. Some musicians, including Carlos Santana, are scheduled to have new albums released simultaneously on CD and DataPlay.
Ads for DataPlay blank discs started showing up this month with a tag line reading, "This thing is huge." But for the millions of music enthusiasts who have mounted the MP3 revolution, downloading music or copying it from CDs onto hard drives and then to portable players, what's the motivation to switch?
The selling points borrow a page from the DVD playbook, the success story of the video marketplace. The prerecorded versions will also incorporate features like digital photo galleries and music videos that can be viewed when the player is connected to a PC, and even interviews, extended liner notes and music-related games. Future players may well include color LCD screens to play music videos.
In addition, the DataPlay disc is far more compact than a compact disc while offering comparable sound quality. And the players can record music or data -- yes, even MP3 files -- from a hard drive onto blank discs that are easy to carry or swap.
"We're excited," said Aahmek Richards, who is in charge of new media for Arista Records, which is part of BMG. "Technology should allow the business to change and grow in so many ways it never had an opportunity to do."
Indeed. But DataPlay technology raises as many questions as it does expectations among its makers and early supporters. Chief among them, consumer electronics analysts say, is whether the arrival of DataPlay comes too late and offers too little to significantly attract music consumers, especially those of college age.
Todd Oseth, vice president for marketing and business development at DataPlay, said that while the format promised greater content security than CD's, it also offered more flexibility and convenience to reflect listeners' emerging habits, accommodating prerecorded, downloaded or copied music. Ultimately, he suggested, record company support and the marketplace will decide its success.
RSS