Comments on: Battle of the Music Formats http://gigaom.com/2004/02/03/battle-of-the-music-formats/ Sat, 18 May 2013 10:42:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Kamalesh Thakker http://gigaom.com/2004/02/03/battle-of-the-music-formats/#comment-96291 Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://gigaom.wordpress.com/2004/02/03/battle-of-the-music-formats/#comment-96291 The audio file format war being waged today, I find quite interesting.

We’ve seen this before but reversed — with Microsoft huffing and puffing about why all should bow to their file format (defacto standard, 110% market share of Office and rising, rich user experience, blah, blah, blah…no mention of humungo file sizes and general bloat, alas).

I find the recent commentary about Apple’s iPods not supporting WMA (or Real) format to be insulting.

The dangers of file formats have to do with control and subsequent user choices narrowing. This is easily done when a monopoly player also happens to own the file format.

In this new case, Apple does not own the AAC (MP4) format, while WMA *is* owned by Microsoft.

What person not on medication and/or suffering from short-term memory loss would insist that iPods support WMA format? As MP3 slowly is replaced with MP4, wouldn’t this be a perfect juncture for Microsoft to snatch back file format control?

(I never noticed back around 1990, Microsoft volunteering to support WordPerfect files, and Lotus 1-2-3 files back when they were bundling Windows licenses with Office suite sales.)

/kt
L.A., Calif.

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