Sony Taps a Different Market: Music Snobs

Confession time: I am an elitist, judgmental, hoity-toity snobbish audiophile. I reject mainstream music. I buy 400 dollar headphones without a second thought. I have never once purchased music from the iTunes store, because as far as I’m concerned, the sound quality is garbage. And, that being said, if you’re content listening to top 40 hits through Skullcandy headphones hooked up to your 4gb iPod Nano, stop reading. This isn’t for you. Come back when you’re serious. For those of you who get it, you might get a kick out of this: Sony Music is gearing up to unleash an online store that will cater to the finer crowd – one which will specialize in exclusively classical music (and, reportedly, jazz (bonus!)) presented in lossless audio formats. Though Sony hasn’t penned the deals with the other labels yet (Universal, Warner, EMI), it’s assumed everyone will be on board – after all, this can only be an improvement on what I imagine are less-than-stellar sales of online classical music. As a classical fan, especially of several select modern composers (yes, Glass), I’m tickled previously-undefined shades of pink by this prospect. However, it sort of begs the question: how will we listen to these downloads? Most media players can’t play lossless formats without a plugin, and hell, iTunes can’t play them at all. Even I have to make 320CBR versions of my albums if I want to stick them on my iPod. So I guess Sony’s still got a hurdle or two to jump. But kudos to you, Sony, for considering the man with the finer musical taste. I’m gonna go throw on some Brahms and drink chocolate milk out of a wine glass.