Ben Drury 7Digital

New tech threatens mp3s’ low-res reign, says digital expert

Ben Drury, chief strategy officer at 7digital, has said that a new technological ‘tipping point’ could spell the end for the low quality mp3 format.

Anita Awbi
  • By Anita Awbi
  • 14 Oct 2015
  • min read
Ben Drury, chief strategy officer at 7digital, has said that a technological ‘tipping point’ could spell the end for the low quality mp3 format.

Speaking at the inaugural IMPEL Day for independent music publishers last week, Drury predicted that new digital innovations will bring an end to the ubiquity of the mp3.

‘I’m not an audiophile, and I don’t have expensive hi-fi equipment at home, but I do recognise that mp3 technology is now 20 years old,’ he said. ‘It worked incredibly well when we had dial-up connections and not much bandwidth.

‘Unfortunately it’s still the norm in digital music - but we’re now getting to a tipping point where we don’t have to tolerate it any more. Everyone’s broadband connections are easily fast enough to support at least CD quality and people’s devices have enough storage capacity for something better.’

Drury said that while the mp3 was once an efficient way of compressing an audio file, it also removes around 80 percent of the information contained in it.

7digital is now committed to a new sound experience, Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), which has been developed by British firm Meridian Audio. 7digital announced a partnership with the Cambridge-based company several months back, and has since made significant headway.

Drury said: ‘We’d like to see at least CD quality across all digital music services, irrespective of streaming or download. There’s also an exciting opportunity to go beyond CD quality.

‘Two weeks ago we announced the world’s first implementation of hi-res audio for Google Cast, allowing you to stream around your home. We’ve also been investing heavily to support a British technology called MQA.’

Drury went on to explain that, in the consumer technology world, convenience generally wins over quality - accessing millions of songs became more important to people than the sound quality.

‘But what we’re saying is that people really want both and we believe we’re heading towards that,’ Drury added. ‘It may still take several years to happen but we’re getting there. Those technological barriers have really gone away.’

Drury spoke at the inaugural IMPEL Day, held at PRS for Music’s London HQ, on 7 October 2015.

Independent Music Publishers’ e-Licensing (IMPEL) is a collective of around 40 independent music publishers who have joined together to license their repertoire to online services such as Spotify, Apple and YouTube. IMPEL offers the benefits of collective rights management to independent publishers by combining their repertoire and offering it on a multi-territory basis.

IMPEL Day was put together by IMPEL chief executive Jane Dyball with IMPEL’s apprentice Tom Fennell, and included a morning of independent publisher briefing sessions, an afternoon of presentations from digital service providers and a roundtable featuring industry experts.

In the evening, IMPEL held a gig at a Portland Street venue for delegates and speakers, with East India Youth, JAWS and Devlin.