Apple, music companies reportedly developing digital album format

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 02:53

Your IT - Entertainment

Frustrated by the low margins available from dollar-a-shot purchases, record labels are working on ways to entice music consumers to buy entire albums once again. Some are working with Apple, while others are developing their own approach.

As digitally downloading music has become more popular, album sales have fallen off.

Consumers are still buying music, but full albums offer a higher profit margin than individual downloads do, perhaps because some songs on an album just never get purchased when made available individually.

The four largest record companies are working on a product codenamed "Cocktail" to change all that, according to a report in the Financial Times.

EMI, Sony, Warner, and Universal Music Group are working with Apple to create a kind of interactive product that will reproduce some of the appeal of the traditional album.

The Financial Times quotes one executive as saying, “It’s all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork while you listened to the music."

The new album format will supposedly include photos, lyric sheets, and liner notes and enable music listeners to navigate the music from the ancillary material, not just from iTunes.

Cocktail's introduction is targeted for September release, according to the report, possibly in conjunction with a new tablet-slash-media player from Apple.

For other digital album news, see Page 2.