Since the introduction of the MP3 format, many other formats have come and gone, all seeking to dethrone the king of music compression. Who better to defeat the ancient MP3 format than its original creators? Dagfinn Bach, who co-developed the first MP3 player back in 1993, is introducing a new file format for music that sounds pretty interesting.

The new format, dubbed MusicDNA, can hold a variety of information within its container, including:

Lyrics

Videos

Artwork

Blog Posts

…all of which are updated.

Music companies are already throwing in their support, including Beggars Group and German researcher Karlheinz Brandenburg.

Speaking at the Midem music conference, Mr Bach said: “We can deliver a file that is extremely searchable and can carry up to 32GB of extra information in the file itself.

“And it will be dynamically updatable so that every time the user is connected, his file will be updated.”

MusicDNA is launching a beta, or test, version this spring with a full roll-out at the end of the summer.

Mr Brandenburg, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Germany, said: “I think it brings together a number of ideas that have been around for a long time.

“I remember 10 years ago, a lot of people were saying that we need to enrich the user experience, that legal access to music has to give the customers more than just music, and this is certainly one very nice way to do it.”

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