I doubt they're talking about a new encoding format or anything like that. If I had to guess, I would be thinking more about something like the recentish NiN album that came with Garageband files so that you could remix the music yourself. Or which provides synchronised lyrics embedded in the music, or something like that.

Not to mention sales of music downloads are tanking through the floor. Consumption is predominantly streaming now, and that's the way people like it.

I simply don't see any static, local file format succeeding regardless of DRM-encumbrance. It's simply less useful to mainstream users than the streaming equivalent.

The battle isn't about which format your files should be in, it's about whether or not you have any files at all.

That and/or "high definition", "above CD quality" digital audio.

There's a lot of noise in the digital music industry about high quality audio at present. U2 may be following in Neil Young's PONO footsteps.

There may be doubt whether high quality audio can deliver what it promises - i.e. an improvement over MP3 320 that is noticeable to normal people's ears. But the Pono kickstarter proves beyond any doubt that there's money it it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-wh...

From TFA, it sounds like they might finally understand the dynamics of piracy and drm:

"Bono tells TIME he hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music"

Stopping piracy isn't accomplished by punishing users, its done by making legitimacy easier/more appealing in the first place.

However, if it's truly irresistibly exciting, but $1.29 per song, that implies DRM, as one can safely assume the exciting aspect is not the act of purchasing the music.

Why would it be? iTunes tracks started transitioning to DRM-free 7 years ago - as far as I can see from some quick research they were one of if not the first music store offering DRM free music from any of the major labels, and absolutely gave immense weight to the DRM-free push before many of the current competing services even existed.

So, if your comment is going to follow the typical apple bashing, history ignoring model, just don't bother.

I would bet money that it will be.

Whatever it becomes it's going to have iTunes lock-in. So glad I never bought into that walled garden.