In the course I’m teaching, this week I asked students to tell me why they thought Apple chose the MPEG-4 based “AAC” format for iTunes rather than the earlier MP3 format. In every case, students chose the purported “better” quality of AAC as the reason. Many equated Apple with high-quality products, and similarly, high-quality standards for music.
While many folks online will talk about the advantages in the format (including Apple, whom many students cited as their sole source), I liked what I read here on the matter.
They hint at the one, defining reason:
In order for Apple to be able to sell music online, they had to do so in a protective wrapper so that purchased songs couldn’t be bootlegged by customers for their friends. Apple could add the wrapper to AAC, just as Microsoft did (more than one way) to Windows Media files.
Today, I purchase music from both Amazon (MP3) and iTunes (AAC) and am not sure there’s a perceivable difference on my part between the files. Frankly, I’m waiting for these two to both start selling lossless formats that equal what I can get on CDs (or better yet, what’s available on SuperAudioCD)!