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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. "
People just realize that when they need disk space, it's easier to delete mp3s because they can get them again anytime they want freely. The same can't be said for most WMA and AAC files which cost money. Once they're gone, you probably have to pay again. I know I didn't archive my music collection in mp3, though. I chose Ogg Vorbis, and may people choose something like FLAC.
all the companies producing new mp3 players agree...
[/sarcasm]
So, most of what we download is crap. What's new here?
See what I've been reading.
He's going to download what is readily available, or use the default format of the most readily available CD ripper. Winamp will play them all regardless; you can't even tell the difference.
Remember when Fraunhofer threatened companies for infringing on certain MP3 license a few years ago? Well, that shook the industry into finding alternate solutions. For me, if it isn't some form of lossless open standard such as Flac than I prefer to pass not only on the sound track but the playing device as well. For me, listening to highly compressed MP3 isn't my cup of tea even if the compression ratio for lossy is higher than lossless.
I am glade that Wikipedia settled (?) on OGGs rather than MP3s due to the open nature of the format. Hopefully this trend will continue whereby patent encumbrance may not be best solutions.
Could it be that the people who are running the spyware for this data to be mined for the research are more prone to losing their P2Ped mp3s when the 128 kilibyte .exe they downloaded thinking it was some game nuked their drive.? :)
In politics, you proclaim as already true what you would like to happen eventually.
Quite possibly. The first year you discover MP3, you get everything you always wanted, but could never find on CD. The second year, you go back to your first-year tracks, realize that 128/Xing sounds like ass, and redownload them at 192/LAME. The third year, you fill in the blanks.
And you have a music archive that (as long as you remember to do offsite backup of the hard drive) will be with you for the rest of your life. No DRM. No worries about companies going under. No worries about the DRM or playback software being available on whatever OS you're using in 2018. Ever.
On the rare (RARE!) occasion that I buy one. Why? Because I can actually play them. See, WMA, AAC, OGG or the codec-of-the-week might be superior to MP3 but everything that plays compressed digital audio plays MP3. It's an issue of what will play where. When everything I have plays OGG, I'll probably switch to that. It'll probably be a long while before I replace my DVD player with one with OGG support though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As much as I dislike starting an argument with a logical fallacy, you should really look at the article a bit before making any claims as to the death of MP3.
First of all the article page loads with the title "MSN Tech & Gadgets". This is noteworthy, especially seeing as how MS is trying to break into this market. Of course they'd say MP3 is dead, especially when they're touting a DRM enabled propriatary format.
Also, we have this gem from the article:
According to researchers at The NPD Group's MusicWatch Digital who track the contents of people's hard drives, the percentage of MP3-formatted songs in digital-music collections has slid steadily in recent months, down to about 72 percent of people's collections from about 82 percent a year ago.
Aside from this being really creepy, it's a biased sample. Anyone who would let someone put monitoring software on their PC (assuming it's not spyware) would probably not have a lot of MP3 files on their machine, if you know what I mean *nudge nudge*.
To sum up: Article is bogus advertising spin. Nothing to see here, move along.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: MP3 is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered MP3 community when IDC confirmed that MP3 market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all music files. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that MP3 has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. MP3 is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive audio test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict MP3's future. The hand writing is on the wall: MP3 faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for MP3 because MP3 is dying. Things are looking very bad for MP3. As many of us are already aware, MP3 continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Open source MP3 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time MP3 developers Frauhofer and Philips only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: MP3 is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Due to the troubles of Frauhofer and Philips, abysmal sales and so on, Philips went out of business and was taken over by Magnavox who sell another troubled audio system. Now MP3 is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that MP3 has steadily declined in market share. MP3 is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If MP3 is to survive at all it will be among audio dilettante dabblers. MP3 continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, MP3 is dead.
Fact: MP3 is dying
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You forgot Poland :-(
This is a shame as OGG is a much better format. I can distinguish MP3 immediately even if it is encoded at 192. It has a nasty distortion in the high frequency range that makes dogs breakfast of any good electric guitar. Disclaimer - my hearing is better then the average for 99.9 people of the same age and I have worked on an MP3 implementation so I have listened to it until puking for several weeks.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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Have you ever noticed how almost every small storage technology uses the horribly limited, slow, badly designed FAT filesystem? There is a reason for this: FAT is the most compatable FS available. Few people use it anymore on their main filesystem (because it sucks), but almost everything else seems to use it.
I see the same thing happening with MP3. People just digitizing their music so they don't have to pull out CDs all the time will use whatever has the best sound/size tradeoff (or whatever comes with the system). If they're encoding their music for use on joe random device, they'll use MP3.
I read the internet for the articles.
And SO much MP3 music is done under the radar how the fsck would they know ... unless it's on of those "studies" conducted by an interested party to show trends they would like to project as "real" Considering this is on MSN ...
MusicWatch Digital who track the contents of people's hard drives,
OK, just how are they supposed to know what's on people's hard drives? Are they running a bunch of zombies or something? Sorry, man, but this sounds like shlock.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
yep
until there is a format that is as universally supported (dvd players, car stereos, ipod type devices, etc) as mp3, or until most/all devices will let you install your own codecs, mp3 is not dead.
------ hi mom
Not all free downloads are illegal, thank you very much!
Ogg is fine, I have no tchnical quarrels with it, and as a free codec, I think its fabulous.
however, if I decided not to use ogg, WMA would be about the last choice. Think about it:
1) WMA is not playable in an iPod and is difficult on non-windows platforms
2) WMP10 plays and RIPs MP3
3) MP3 is probably the best choice for people who need to move it amongst platforms.
4) unemcumbered AAC's are the best choice for people who own an iPod.
5) If you really care about the music and dont' want to be a slave to the flavor of the month, choose flac or ape.
6) WMA's are probably the last choice you'd make. No, check that. ATRAC is the last choice. But WMA's are close.
Seriously, you can rip in MP3. Make it your default in WMP10. Better yet, use your brain and use the FREE version of WinAmp 5.x. Better quality, no lock-in.
Seriously, did they break into people's computers and do searches? Did they use P2P searches (which are about as reliable as a slashdot poll)? Did they run around a small part of the US looking for information? No, the story says "analysts" and "researchers", without naming names as far as I read.
You know what this is? This is akin to the old conspiracy theorist FUD model of writing, with a journalistic twist. The conspiracy theorist fud model simply states that you state the problem, in as worrying as words possible, every 2 or so sentances inbetween prooving it. For example:
"Researchers at NY university said that an asteroid is going to hit the earth within 2/3 months. This asteroid will wipe out ALL of the life on the planet. It is the size of texas."
Ect, ect ect and so on. Journalists write it in a journalistic way, however, instead of having the FUD every 2-3 sentances, they restate their thesis in a different way, then proceed to use words such as "researchers" or "analysts" over and over to somehow give it credibility. So, how did they get the information?
The "analysts and researchers" are "NPD group". They have a spyware app called "music watch digital", you know, the one that is put onto EMI's CD's and loaded onto the machine via autorun. You know, the one that can be disabled by the shift key? Yea, that one, the one that catalouges a persons harddisk and sends it back to whoever.
Now, the next question is, why would ZD net have a MS sponsored article written by a CNET staff member? Oh, wait, there's a second article at the bottom of the page, talking about a "maturing" mp3 market. You know, the market that is now going towards paying for DRM'd disabled music online? Notice the mention of sony, apple, and MS's players which will undoubtedly go towards people looking into these players and music services?
This equates to "our spyware app says that the mp3 may be dieing. People are using these players". Must be a slow news day or somethin'.
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