Slashdot Mirror
MP3 Going the Way of the 8-Track?
joepa writes "According to this MSN/ZDNet story, MP3 is dying. Overall, the data has not shown a clear trend, but at least one recent study reports that people are deleting MP3s faster than they are downloading them. AAC and WMA, meanwhile, are apparently gaining market share. Is this evidence that MP3 is being used largely to sample music rather than for permanent archival and listening purposes? They still don't think so. "
I guess I'll have to stop playing mp3s on by BSD boxen..
I frankly don't see mp3 going anywhere in the near future. It's ubiquitous, open, and of high quality. Despite what many "audiophiles" will say to the contrary, a 224 capped VBR0 mp3 will not be perceptibly different from even a the most perfect "lossless" method for 99% of music.
My 486 can play mp3s. My crappy DVD player can play mp3s. My old-as-hell CD-based mp3 player can play mp3s.
Sure, someday there will be a switch. Maybe for multi-channel audio, maybe for special neural orgasm stimulation, maybe for quantum compression. But for the time being, no file format exists that has enough of a net benefit over mp3 to warrent a mass-exodus.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
> Well, that shook the industry into finding alternate solutions.
Yes, certainly that's why they went for WMA (Microsofts patent portofolio) and AAC (AT&T, Dolby, Sony and, you may have guessed it, Fraunhofer IIS).
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
My hoard of Napster 1.0 music files aren't going anywhere soon. Sure, they are redundant with other stuff I have downloaded, and many I haven't listened to in years. But going through them would take time, and I never know when I might need that 'Men Without Hats' track. Besides, harddrive space is incredibly cheap, the whole collection is probably taking up less than $5.00 worth of disk drive.
The manufactures are still marketing the products as "mp3" Players even though they have support for different formats. So people might buy things like the rio karma and the dell jukebox because they are "mp3" Players, odds are they'll end up putting wma's on them. As the story says, many people don't know the difference and don't really care that much.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If he thought he was downloading Bad Religion's "Against the Grain" album, and realized that it was incorrectly named from whatever Britney Spears' latest album is, renaming it doesn't make it Bad Religion.
Deletion is the only option.
-9mm-
An playing LPs in your car was always easy.
No wonder they still selling millions of albums on "vynl"
As a DJ I've bought and still buy a significant number of vinyl records, and in fact probably own more LPs than CDs. I love my 1200s and crates of records, but I still wish vinyl sounded as good as CDs and didn't require maintenance. My shoulders, back, and arms also wish the 12 inch records could magically go on a diet and trim down to CD sexiness.
Sure, there are some aesthetic listening qualities to playing stuff on vinyl. Some people like the slight static/crackle sounds and the other random artifacts that they'll call enhancements. After spending way too much time previewing records in reference headphones for years I think I could do without such artifacts.
That said, whenever I'm playing out at parties or a club I've noticed that no one wants to see someone spin CDs. There's some aesthetic aspect of nightlife that makes people think that 12 inch rotating dics look cool. And somehow spinning vinyl appears to be an artform, whereas using CDs is relegated to the respectfulness of queuing up something in winamp. Oh well.
You can only violate the DMCA if you're a citizen of the United States or one of it's territories.
Learn something new.