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'MP3' Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary

Posted by timothy on from the instant-nostalgia dept.

Sachin Garg writes "The Data Compression News Blog reports that on July 14th 2005, the name "MP3" celebrates its tenth anniversary. On this day back in 1995, the researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS decided to use ".mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987, in 1992 it was considered far ahead of its times, then MP3 became the generally accepted acronym for the ISO standard IS 11172-3 "MPEG Audio Layer 3" and no other coding method so far (2005) could uncrown MP3 as the popular standard for digital music on the computer and on the Internet."

1 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Why OGG Is Worse by teneighty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While Ogg is technically superior, it's never going to catch on because:

    • MP3 is "good enough" for many people.
    • Few players support it.
    • The name "Ogg Vorbis" is a huge handicap to overcome.

    As a geek, I'd love the see technical superiority win, but I don't think Ogg is well-positioned to have any chance of taking marketshare from MP3s.