Great Lakes Media Technology Blog

Chicago Band Wilco Testing Out New Downloadable Technologies

Wilco seems to be on the front lines of a lot of media technology developments lately. Last month Wilco told its fans that the Blu-ray version of their black and white documentary with a single audio track was a "waste of money". Many have taken this to be a knock on Blu-ray, but I understand it to be a knock on the nessesity of the medium for such a project. This belief is backed up by their touring mate Neil Young, releasing an audio-visual collection on Blu-ray describing the merits of the audio/visual quality supported by Blu-ray as AMAZING.

In light of this quasi-controversy, Wilco is partnering with Warner Music Group to release a MP3/JPEG music application called "PlayApp". According to WSJ.com, "PlayApps are single file, custom multimedia programs that can contain music, pictures, lyrics, and video. The songs in the "More Like The Moon EP" Wilco music playapp are extractable as 192 kbps MP3 files while the pictures are extractable as high resolution JPG files. PlayApps can be created for any computer system, but are initially being developed for the Windows platform, XP/Vista or greater."

MP3's have long got a lot of publicity, rightly so with the hype surrounding MP3 players, but has long struggled with the business model of marketing the music. Without "packaging" a major component of the marketing of an album is lost. So does "PlayApp" take a step in bridging this gap? Post your comments!