When mainstream consumers begin seriously embracing online music delivery, they won't be hurting for choices.
Since MP3 opened the floodgates last year, the competition has heated up, and a number of companies have created platforms to deliver both open and secured music files over the Net.
The latest entry is Lucent Technologies, which announced Wednesday that it's working with e.Digital to develop a new handheld device that will play secured music files. The unnamed player will be manufactured by e.Digital, and uses a proprietary audio-compression format developed by Bell Labs called EPAC, or "perceptual audio encoder."
The portable player is expected to be available before Christmas, and will have both onboard and removable flash card memory. Joyce Eastman, director of audio initiatives at Lucent's New Ventures division, said that the EPAC format is based on years of development at Bell Labs, and will take MP3 and other formats to task.
"We think we can fool you between CD and EPAC at 128Kbps," Eastman said, noting that the new format has done well in trials in which users were presented with a variety of different formats.
Eastman said that EPAC compresses music at a rate of 11 to 1, and will yield files about half the size of MP3 files. In addition, Lucent said that EPAC will be compliant with the Recording Industry Association of America's Secure Digital Music Initiative, which will roll out in two phases. The portable device guidelines will be released this summer and the complete architecture is due in March 2000.
One of the RIAA's main concerns with the SDMI architecture will be security, and Eastman said that the Lucent platform will use encryption and watermarking to protect files for distribution. Above all, though, Lucent said that its system will separate itself from the pack based on its sound quality.
"What's important to the labels is quality, licensing, and security," said Rachel Walkden, co-director of the audio initiatives division. "The quality is particularly important, and even if consumers can't hear the difference, the artists and labels can."
With Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies 4.0 announcement this month, there are now at least a half-dozen different platforms for delivering music over the Internet.
So what will separate one from the other as the competition intensifies in the coming months?
"The availability of pre-encoded content will determine what format is used," Eastman said. "So whichever format the labels think is best will be the one ruling in another year or two."
