Plug and play?

My good friend and Melburnian Josh put me on to this earlier today:

Bonus content for fans on USB-stick albums



The Australian music industry is getting behind a new locally developed music format that will allow consumers to access an ongoing stream of bonus content and listen to their collections from any computer or mobile phone.

From this week albums from Sneaky Sound System, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and local indie acts Grafton Primary and Skipping Girl Vinegar will be sold on USB sticks featuring new "DDA" digital album technology.

People who buy the albums register with an online locker system that not only makes a back-up of the songs - which can then be accessed from any other computer or mobile phone - but also provides access to a swathe of bonus content provided by the artist on an ongoing basis such as photos, videos, lyrics, artwork, new tracks and even concert tickets.

Read the entire article here.

While I'm always excited about people coming up with inventive new ways to bring music to the masses, I have to admit I'm a little concerned. Bonus features are great, but they make an artist lazy. Instead of buying the fourth re-release of a record, why can't we just pay four dollars extra for an EP of new material? It's not that I'm against new technology, it's just that...

My parents' old Beatles LPs are timepieces. They look like they did forty years ago, they sound like they did forty years ago, and they contain the same songs as they did when they were first released. What happens when you put that album on a flash drive? Maybe all of a sudden one day the songs are re-mastered. Maybe someone goes in and touches up the cover art file. Perhaps Paul's bridge on "A Day In The Life" is replaced with a guest performance by Jay-Z. When does an album as we know it seize to be an album?

Call me old fashioned, but I think it's worth a think through anyway.