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U2 and Apple developing ‘unpirate-able’ format the fans will LOVE to pay for

By | Published on Friday 19 September 2014

U2

Hey, so while you were moaning about U2 devaluing music in your seventeenth opinion piece about their new album and the way they released it, Bono and the boys were hard at work proving you wrong. Because the band’s relationship with Apple apparently doesn’t stop at banking a fat cheque in return for a half-baked collection of songs. No, they’re developing a new music download format so compelling that people will want to pay for it.

In a preview of an interview that appears in its new issue, Time magazine writes: “[Bono] hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music – whole albums as well as individual tracks. The point isn’t just to help U2 but less well known artists and others in the industry who can’t make money, as U2 does, from live performance”.

“Songwriters aren’t touring people”, says Bonzo. “Cole Porter wouldn’t have sold T-shirts. Cole Porter wasn’t coming to a stadium near you”.

According to Billboard, the singer adds that the format is “about eighteen months away”, explaining: “I think it’s going to get very exciting for the music business. [It will be] an audiovisual interactive format for music that can’t be pirated and will bring back album artwork in the most powerful way, where you can play with the lyrics and get behind the songs when you’re sitting on the subway with your iPad or on these big flat screens. You can see photography like you’ve never seen it before”.

Oh, so it’s like every other format that’s going to ‘save the music industry’ then. Carry on, Bonbon.



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