Chipmakers take spotlight in music battle
As digital music heads into the mainstream, Cirrus Logic and other chipmakers could influence the music formats played inside home stereos and other devices--and ensure they block copying.
Cirrus Logic is the computer chip manufacturer that makes the lion's share of the processing chips now going inside MP3 players and soon to be seen inside ordinary living-room stereos. For the last several years, Perry's team has been testing digital audio and copy-protection technologies and cutting deals to put these technologies on the chips themselves.
Until recently, this hasn't had a sweeping influence on the digital music market. But as digital music heads into the mainstream, people are starting to take it off computers and onto Walkman-like devices and ordinary stereos. That means Cirrus and other chipmakers could potentially influence the types of music formats played inside these mass-market systems--and ensure home stereos block copying for the first time.
The chipmakers' influence stems from the limited processing power and data space on inexpensive chips meant for stereos and portable devices. The companies must choose instead of supporting everything. In Cirrus' case, this has meant including MP3 and Microsoft formats so far. Notably absent is RealNetworks, which has focused on streaming services rather than downloaded music.
"The big race (for digital music technologies) is going to be getting distribution in as many consumer devices as they can," said Steve Vonder Haar, an analyst with The Yankee Group. "Consumer devices are critical."
A complicated dance
After years of legal wrangling, closed-door business discussions and
standards battles, it's still far from clear how online music will be
distributed--or by whom.
For their part, music labels have been indecisive as to which format will reach the most people and will provide the most protection against copying on file-swapping services such as Napster. All the labels have experimented with various proprietary formats from Microsoft, AT&T and RealNetworks, as well as with ordinary MP3s. They've also tried a host of different ways of protecting their songs against illegal copying without yet settling on a single standard.
Inside the cross-industry group known as the Secure Digital Music Initiative, music labels, technology companies and consumer electronics companies have fought for more than two years to find a common standard for protecting music. Each has a different set of goals: watertight protection for the labels vs. inexpensive, invisible technology for the consumer electronics companies, for example. Delays and infighting have been the result.
Entering a protected world
Also built into chips now rolling off of Cirrus' and other manufacturers'
assembly lines are controversial copy protections,
or "digital rights management" technologies. As these chips become more
widely used, consumers could find for the first time their own home stereos
blocking them from making tapes or other copies.
These features, which prevent a song from being copied and distributed an unlimited number of times, haven't yet played a large part in the online music world. But as the big record labels start releasing songs through planned subscription services such as MusicNet and Duet, they are likely to play a larger role.