Did Amazon Kill MP3?

Hard to imagine how different things could be in ten years time when I look back at the early days of setting up a CD ripping service.

I am amazed that people like us are still in business given the number of times I've heard people foretell our death, mainly at the hands of music streaming services such as Spotify. We quake at the thought of what a mightier giant such as Google might do, and yesterday at Google I/O they had the chance to strike. Thankfully, I don't think they did. But I did see something that was interesting from my MP3 perspective.

Google announced a new video format. I won't bore you with the details but compared to the current high quality format (H264) it generates better images, in smaller files, that load / transfer faster. Why not the same for music? Indeed, given the launch of Google's All Access music streaming service. Don't forget they're paying for the raw computing power and the internet bandwidth that will get those millions of tracks onto iPods, iPhones, computers and Sonos boxes. An uprated digital music file format would have dramatically improved their hardware bill but no, they're sticking with MP3.

So are we.