Apple Cocktail is nine years late

I don't like to boast about it, but if you're going to claim to have thought of something first, it's always best if you've either got a patent on it (if you want to make money from it) or if you publish it, because at least that means you can prove it was your idea.

Anyway, nine years ago, in 2000, I wrote an article in the UK magazine, Sound on Sound, suggesting, essentially, what Apple is now calling "Cocktail". It's the idea that you can add value to digital downloads by packaging the audio track with additional videos, biogs, images etc: stuff that you wouldn't get from Limewire.

But my idea was a bit different, and possibly better. It was that you let people download things freely and legally and let friends share their files without restriction. But at some point, if you own a digital file, you have to buy a licence for it.

Now, on the face of it, that's a pretty lame idea. It would never work. No-one - including me - would fork out real money just to buy a certificate just to say that something I have already is legal.

But what if the "licence" was in the form of something that had a value in itself?

What if it came in the form of a linear PCM encoded (ie not compressed) version of the track? And what if it came with sleevenotes, password-protected video downloads and entitlement to other paraphernalia like T-shirts?

The beauty of this idea is that you don't have to change anything. All you have to do is call the CDs you buy in shops "Licences".

Oh, and you have to bring the price down, as well.

Here's the article in Sound on Sound. Look at the last paragraph.