[NewsPoster]

Irish band U2 is collaborating with Apple on a "new digital music format" designed to entice people into buying more recorded music, according to Time. The band claims that the point isn't just to help its own sales, but artists that can't make money from live performances. "Songwriters aren't touring people," says frontman Bono. "Cole Porter wouldn't have sold t-shirts. Cole Porter wasn't coming to a stadium near you."

Beyond this, there's little indication of what the format might offer. Apple has itself tried to spice up digital music with features like iTunes LP -- which includes elements like videos, photos, and lyrics -- but that has not contributed in any great way to sales, which have still been skewing towards subscription services like Spotify and Pandora.

The Time report does elaborate on what U2's manager hinted at last Friday when he said the band was collaborating with Apple on future projects because they want people to "engage with albums, they want them to support the art form of artwork and lyrics and video content, and just get into their music in a much different way than an MP3 file." That could imply something like iTunes LP, but possibly updated to better exploit modern Apple platforms.

The magazine separately notes that U2's Songs of Innocence album -- given away for free since September 9 -- has been "accessed" by 38 million people on iTunes, whether downloaded or streamed.

[Mr. Strat]

Will it suck as much as their music? Will we have to look at Boner's picture with his pretentious glasses all the time?

[just a poster]

Digital music, including CDs, sounds grating to my ears. I can always hear the square wave and the clipping, add to that the high compression from the loudness wars and this is why I've purchased maybe 20 albums in as many years. The stuff isn't even worth downloading illegally.

This doesn't sound like a new music format like Neil Young is working on, it sounds like a new layout for Itunes music store that maybe does relevancy matching with songwriters.

Every music format in my lifetime has been about convenience and money instead of sound quality. From records, to 8tracks (before my time, sort of), to tape, to CD, now to digital. Why pay money to get a headache? Worse, this digital crapola is now taking over in live concerts too.

[Inkling]

Sadly, yet another indication that all too many in the upper echelons of Apple have made music into something it is not and can never be—a religion. In the end, music formats are like ebook formats. They don't alter the central issue, which is the amount of time we have to listen or to read. That time can't be altered in any significant way. Listening to one song means we're not listening to another. Reading one book means we're not reading another.

[Think 4D]

For those of you complaining, I'm not sure what the problem. Isn't it a good thing that artists are trying to figure out how to use technology to deliver their message?

[pastusza]

Neil Young is not working on a new music format. He's just making "high definition" FLACs available. People claim they hear a difference, but I'd like to hear it in the real world.