KiT albums - The future Musical format, or just another Music Business gimmick?

The idea of streaming music has been a controversial topic since the creation of iTunes back in 2001. Record sales and quality of the recordings has dropped and artists are being effected financially. With an average of .003c per stream Spotify ensures that the majority of artist no longer can earn a living by releasing music.

With Vinyl becoming a fashionable item for young music lovers, there is still a loyal music buying movement who keep physical music alive. The latest format to be released are KiT Albums, which until now have mainly been used by the Korean pop genre, K-Pop.

A combination of physical and digital music, the KiT format is exclusively for smartphone app's. The album consists of a tin box with a number of postcards, badges and a small plastic cartridge that connects to a phone's microphone. Once connected the listener has access to the album for 24 hours, after which a reconnection is required.

With the KiT album format the listener doesnt get to hold the music like CD or a vinyl record. Instead, for an average cost of €30, the happy music fan gets what is pretty much just a tin box with memorabilia, the actual music is on a server. This of course raises issues for the music buyer. Why pay for some photos and access to music that can be listened to through Spotify, even the free version.

With a phone app being used the quality of music is going to be limited compared to listening to physical music. The main reason for this is that a phones speaker is designed for a voice, and not music. The speaker compresses the sound leaving out many of the frequencies, especially bass which plays an important part of the overall quality of sound.

Of course you could always use headphones which will make a slight improvement, but not by much. Unfortunately the majority of headphones on the market are more of a gimmick than anything, even the most famous brands. When an album is being recorded the producer will use a set of speakers to get the perfect sound when mixing and mastering. The reason for this is because at this moment in time it is impossible to match the sound produced from speakers on a set of headphones.

However, with the success of Spotify and iTunes, its clear to see that some music lovers have become accustomed to poor quality sound and seem to be content with this. So it's possible that this new format could catch on for some, but remain a gimmick for others, after all, its only a tin box with post-cards, the music is on a server, just like Spotify.