The State of AAC+

Wow, patent fees suck! Forgive me my frustration about this issue but I really feel that way. Patent fees are a major road block for innovation especially for small companies like mine. I am investigating the possiblity of having AAC+ support in Snowtape now for several weeks. Technically it's working great. But this is just one part of the work that needs to be done. AAC and AAC+ are patented technologies and as a software vendor you have to pay license fees to Via Licensing if you want to sell AAC products. And these license fees can really suck your life out. There is not only a fee for every product you sell but also a huge pile of money to be payed upfront before you can even start selling the first copy.

I really like to give AAC+ in your hands. But it just comes down to an economical equation. Fact is, I can't give it out for free. So for how much should I sell it? That really depends on how much copies I can sell. And that I really don't know. That's why I like to make a short survey with which you can tell me your option. Please fill out the survey if you like. It is completely anonymous. I don't do anything with the data except my business calculation for the AAC+ support.

I also should mention that there maybe is an option with how playback of AAC+ could be added for free. Apple has built-in support for AAC in Mac OS X, however not for AAC+. To a certain degree AAC+ is compatible with AAC. This means I could also add basic playback for AAC+ by using Apple's internal AAC support. But that would mean degrated quality, even worse than MP3, because AAC+ streams normally use smaller bandwidth. If you are asking me, this is what Radio Gaga does, however I am not sure about it.

August 16th, 2009

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