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Digital Music To Get More Extras In 2008?

by Will Safer on January 3, 2008 at 03:26 PM

Digital music may be getting more "meta" this year, an advance that could make downloaded songs and albums more appealing to consumers who have turned to less-than-legal manners of getting their music.

A common complaint concerning MP3s is their lack of interesting extras – the types of things you typically find inside the cases of compact discs, such as lyrics, liner notes, images and even keepsakes. That may change this year, as competition among the digital music purveyors heats up and third-party creators tap into the interest of music fans for more information.

Disney has already created something called a "Digital Magazine," although this is intended for use with CDs. Still, this isn't too far from adaptation to an all digital experience. Apple's iTunes and iPod are capable of handling more types of information than just music, as is Microsoft's Zune. In the case of iTunes, some albums come with exclusive tracks, "making of" videos, and videos of the album's singles -- none of which are available on their store-bought CD brethren.

Gracenote has been compiling tons of data about artists, albums and songs for years. (Whenever you drop a new CD into your computer to transfer songs to your hard drive, it's likely Gracenote that provides the information that automatically fills in the album name, track numbers, song and artist information, plus album artwork, as well.) It seems that's just scratching the surface.

From Reuters/Billboard.

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Tags: ipod itunes zune gracenote download disney, IpodItunesZuneGracenoteDownloadDisney

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