Washington D.C. — The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) unveiled a logo that digital music retailers can use to designate recordings that meet the high-resolution music definition developed last year by multiple industry groups.
The logo will help music fans identify the highest quality recordings, RIAA said.
Last year, industry groups defined high-resolution music as “lossless audio capable of reproducing the full spectrum of sound from recordings which have been mastered from better-than-CD quality (48kHz/20-bit or higher) music sources which represent what the artists, producers and engineers originally intended.”
The groups consisted of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA); DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group; The Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing; Sony Music Entertainment; Universal Music Group; and Warner Music Group.
The new logo will identify high-resolution recordings available from digital music retailers in the U.S., Canada, and Europe for commercial downloads or streaming. The logo was designed to complement the Hi-Res Audio logo licensed by the Japan Audio Society for use on compatible consumer electronics devices.
The logo will also be accompanied by the name and resolution of a song’s digital file format, RIAA said.
Record labels will also feature the logo on advertising and promotional materials, RIAA said.
The new Hi-Res Music logo will be available to digital music retailers and record labels starting this summer. Interested parties should contact Shannon Gregory at [email protected].
“Increasing numbers of digital music fans are expressing interest in high-resolution music, and we want to create a consistent experience for them,” said Mark Piibe, executive VP of global business development and digital strategy at Sony Music Entertainment. “This new logo and definition enables consumers to easily identify music that reproduces the full range of sound from recordings, exactly as the artist intended.”
Last year the groups defining high-resolution audio also created voluntary descriptions for the four types of master source recordings that can be used to describe high-res files and CD-qualty files available through digital music retailers.
Each description “describes a recording that has been made from the best-quality music source currently available,” the groups said.
The four categories and their descriptions are as follows:
MQ-P: From a PCM master source that is 48kHz/20 bit or higher (typically 96/24 or 192/24 content).
MQ-A: From an analog master source that delivers high-res quality.
MQ-C: From a CD master source (44.1 kHz/16 bit content) in which legacy CD masters are employed as source material.
MQ-D: From a DSD/DSF master source (typically 2.8 or 5.6 MHz content).
