Are Apple And Major Labels Planning A CD-Like ‘Audio Upgrade’ Campaign?

Remember all of the money you spent – and the record labels made – when upgraded your record and tape collection to "superior sounding" CDs? Former label chief and Jimmy Iovine certainly does; and I'm hearing persistent talk that he's close to selling a similar audio upgrade campaign to Tim Cook and his new bosses at Apple. 

Iovine and his Beats colleagues have long been critics of  the audio quality delivered by traditional mp3's. They set out to fix it with Beats headphones, earbuds and speakers; but that's just the start. "The thing I am most proud of is that we got a generation of young people to care about sound quality," he told the WSJ. " We believe in the entire sound ecosystem, We are going to find its flaws and fix them."

But it could be a tough sell.

Because of the growing popularity of streaming music, we're on an era where fewer and fewer are actually buying music. But if Iovine and Apple can convince even a fraction of music consumers to upgrade to lossless audio – or better yet a new Apple proprietary version of it –  it's found money for his old friends back in the record business, as well as his new compadres in Cupertino.