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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."

20 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Patent Issues? by gbulmash · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Recently, a friend got a spam about MP3's patent issues and a software package backed by some lawyer and programmer to convert your MP3s into a non-patented format. Stupid, because Microsoft has claimed WMA is free (and just about every portable player and PC jukebox supports it), and if you don't trust Microsoft, you can always go with OGG. Why buy anything from these spammers?

    They make some vague claims, such as "we believe [the patent owners] are serving papers right now." Note the fact that they have no concrete examples of this happening. They just believe it is. Then: "it's believed that one Website Owner has recently settled out of court for several millions." Once again, no concrete example. Just a belief that this has happened.

    But great scams always include a grain of truth, this one being that MP3's patent is owned by Thomson, and they have set licensing terms.

    So my question is, does anyone KNOW of Thomson actually suing anyone or gearing up for a rash of suits as the spammers claim? And this is not "I believe they are" or "a friend knows a guy whose sister's boyfriend's cousin's hairdresser's uncle got sued by Thomson while removing a gerbil from Richard Gere's butt." Does anyone have any concrete info on Thomson enforcing their patents?

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Patent Issues? by donutz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Microsoft has claimed WMA is free (and just about every portable player and PC jukebox supports it)

      Well except that every iPod does not support it...and that's a significant number of portable players...

  2. .bit by fembots · · Score: 3, Interesting

    this is the overwhelming result of our poll: everyone voted for .mp3 as extension for ISO MPEG Audio Layer 3! As a consequence, everyone please mind that for WWW pages, shareware, demos, and so on, the .bit extension is not to be used anymore. There is a reason for that, believe me :-)

    I wonder what is the reason for not using .bit? Does it sound too short?

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
  3. Re:Raise your hand... by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And who remembers typing in all the arcane command line options to the only encoder that was generally available... l3enc and l3dec? This was if you didn't compile the ISO encoder...

    Also, distributing pirated keys to WinPlay and l3enc/dec because both would only do 30 seconds otherwise?

  4. Re:considered? by turtled · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember in 1996 I had a Metallica site (Yes, Metallica) with MP3s. They were small, encoded at 56k / 22khz mono, maybe about 1~1.5MB per song. I had people download hard to find B-sides. At that time is when I found out what bandwidth was. I had them served on my free 20MB web space at enteract.com. I had over 10,000 visitors in 4 months. They shut me down because I had to purchase more bandwidth. I thought it was free web space...

    --
    "I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
  5. Evil Bit set by 1998 by RobertB-DC · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The article is only about the dawn of .mp3, but within less than three years, the RIAA & co. had configured themselves to set the Evil Bit whenever they saw the .mp3 extension. Or at least, that was my experience.

    In 1998, I started a little fan site detailing the history of a country group -- I won't name them, but they became famous and then infamous within the span of 5 years. As part of the site, I included some low-quality .mp3's of the group's orignal sound, from some out-of-print indie albums. But before you could say "infringement", I got a Cease And Desist letter from the group's lawyers. I capitulated, but the affair proved the perfect grist for a story in the local alternative newsweekly -- they saw the group as having sold out to Nashville, with the C&D just further proof.

    But check out what the group's manager said about the nascent format:
    Senior Management's Simon Renshaw, the band's manager, insists the only reason the band went after Brooks was that the sound bites were in MP3 form. "I will just say one thing: His site with MP3 files...is a huge red flag," Renshaw says. "And that's all I really want to say about that, quite honestly."

    And the lawyer, on the broader issue of copyrights:
    "The bottom line to me is very simple," says Beiter, whose firm was hired by Senior Management, the band's Nashville-based management company. "To me, it's just not fair. It's not fair for him to take their copyright and decide that he's unilaterally going to give it away out on the Internet. It's not fair for him to do that. He may try to cast it as David versus Goliath or Robin Hood or whatever, but it's just not fair for him to do that. He never even asked."

    In the end, I got more free publicity for my little fan site than if I'd scattered flyers all over Dallas. I'll avoid whoring for hits in this post, though... I think you can figure out where to click if you're really interested.
    --
    Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
    1. Re:Evil Bit set by 1998 by pete6677 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The RIAA has a history of trying to stomp out ALL digital music distribution, legal or otherwise. I recall them filing several lawsuits against the old mp3.com which did not even host illegal RIAA music. Also, they tried to sue the makers of the first portable MP3 player (the Diamond Rio) even though it didn't even have a record function. It's not surprising that they jumped all over a music fan's website, nevermind that such a site couldn't possibly cost them sales and in fact could only promote interest in the band.

      What the RIAA really fears is not that someone will download the latest pop music for free, but that artists will see they don't need the RIAA anymore. They are a very expensive middleman that musicians would love to be able to get around, and are finally able to do so. This is why it is so important for the big studios to keep a tight grip on the distribution channel for as long as they can.

  6. Re:MP2's by isorox · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So do I, but that's because we still use them all the time in a broadcast medium

  7. I used it... by Animaether · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and it was great! Downloaded from a BBS, had a vague description. It was like reading one of those claims about sticking a feature-length TV-res movie in only 100MB now. Couldn't believe it. Had to try anyway. Was an eye-opener, and I knew the future of music would change right there and then.

    That said.. it immediately made me look for other solutions, as nobody else could play back MP3s, and ended up using a-law and mu-law codecs from Microsoft. Smaller files than plain WAVs, not bad quality %)

    Note: I was working on sound effects back then and needed to compact them for a game. To this date, I still don't care much for CD rips and 'sharing' music :P

    1. Re:I used it... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Downloaded from a BBS, had a vague description. It was like reading one of those claims about sticking a feature-length TV-res movie in only 100MB now.

      It was the same for me. I found it on a website somewhere, but there was no files available to plug into it. I completely forgot about it until a friend excitedly called me up and asked if I had WinPlay3. He shot me a file or two, and I was absolutely amazed. Up until then, I'd thought MOD files were the height of computer music. ;-)

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  8. Re:Raise your hand... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And who remembers typing in all the arcane command line options to the only encoder that was generally available... l3enc and l3dec?

    Ahhh, l3enc. That program was like magic in a bottle. Put a 50-100MB WAV in one end, and a 3MB MP3 would pop out the other. Considering the piss poor excuse for sound editing and ripping tools we had back then, it was amazing that I ever found anything to encode! (IIRC, I pulled music from CDs to play with the encoding.)

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  9. what significant patents to expire in 2005-2006? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Anyone have a list of significant technological patents that were granted in 1985 and 1986 and are due to expire by the end of next year?

    I guess this means that all MS Dos/ CPM/ IBM DOS, IBM PC, etc patents are expired now.

  10. 1996 MP3 file stamps by mrm677 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have about 3 gigs of MP3s with file stamps dating back to early 1996.

    Ah, the days of downloading MP3s from anonymous FTP sites on the newly installed LAN in my dormroom!

  11. Re:considered? by dougmc · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I severely doubt your 2400 baud or even mindblowing 14.4kbps could handle 5 meg
    A 14.4 Kbps modem can download 5 MB of data in about an hour, ignoring compression. (mp3 files can't be compressed much anyways.)

    That is certainly well within the capabilities of a modem to download. I recall downloading the SLS Linux distribution at about 30 1.4 MB floppy images, and I think I only had a 9600 bps modem. It took a while, but I got it.

    Even the solid type storage formats couldn't handle much more thna a meg. considered. hmph.
    Solid type storage formats? I'm not sure what you mean by that.

    10 years or so ago, I had a DAT drive at home, and one at work. So I used that to move stuff back and forth. It was expensive, but it held 2 GB on a single tape, far more than I'd ever need to move at once, and it was way better than trying to use floppies.

  12. Oh yeah? I remember MP1 and MP2 by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Around the time that MP3 was getting on its feet, I remember tinkering with MP1 and MP2 files... Websites like the Internet Underground Music Archive had them available for download. The thing I remember was that MP1 files played fine on a 486 50 MHz, while high-bitrate MP2 files were too choppy to play back properly. MP3s were out of the question on a 486 (until many years later when highly optimized MP3 player software emerged). I remember that even 192 kbps MP2s still had numerous audible defects in them, so 128 kbps MP3s seemed amazing in comparison. Of course, I had to decode the MP3 file to WAV before playing it. Those were the days...

    --
    Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
  13. First large-scale ripping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Back in the spring of 1997, my buddies and I ordered the entire Time-Life Sounds of the 70's collection and ripped the entire thing (@128kbps) using l3enc. I personally had a 486DX33 set up with a SB Pro soundcard with a panasonic CDROM interface and 4 2x Panasonic CDROMs. A batch file ripped and encoded up to 4 CDs in about 16 hours IIRC. We even tagged them all with ID3. Ahhh, those were the days...

  14. Re:Raise your hand... by drix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hah-I remember that. I actually did research into buying/creating an offboard MP3 decoder card so I could free up the CPU to play Quake. Em were the days...

    --

    I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
  15. Re:MP3? Remember SWA by azav · · Score: 2, Interesting

    CD : Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers. I had to encode them at a rate of 98 since all I had to store them on was a 100 Meg drive. Ya. Meg. It was like 200 bucks back them.

    Who demoed it : For a short time, Apple's Phil Schiller worked at Macromedia. He was the guy. Took it to some meeting, was super cool.

    And the apps: Bingo! You got 50% of it. Back then when we were working on Shockwave Audio, SWA really was MP3 - but even we didn't know it. To the best of my knowledge, Macromedia was the first major licensee of Fraunhoffer's technology and it was used in Director, Shockwave and SoundEdit 16. The Audio was recorded and compressed with SoundEdit 16. The player was created in Director and was cross platform from the get go.

    I mentioned this to our VP, Norm and he instantly thought of issues with the MPAA so nothing became of my creation. Too bad we were a few years ahead of our time. Others, like Buzz Kettles on the SoundEdit team created simple players as well. I'm pretty sure mine was the first to create a playlist and allow songs to be selected from a list. A few months ago at a bar in San Francisco, a guy came in, recognized me and said "Zav! Hey, Do you remember when we wrote the first mp3 player ever?" Man, I had totally forgotten about it. And in case anyone cares, my name is Alex Zavatone. :]

    --
    - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
  16. yes, but will it last? by Phybersyk0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems to me that since storage capacities are rising while cost to the end user is falling (i.e. a 200gb drive can be purchased for around US$80) will compression even matter in another 10 years? Right now the "pirates" are starting to distribute in both AAC & APE formats (totally lossless compression) files are only marginally smaller than the standard 10mb/minute for 16-bit .wav files. I've ripped nearly ALL of my own CD's (roughly 300 CD's, at 320kbps VBR and it's only 21 Gigs of space... so what, like 4-5 DVD-9's?

  17. the email that started it all... by dettus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the official birthday for mp3 is july 14th, 1995, at 12:29: gmt+2.
    at this time the fraunhofer institute for integrated circuits released the following (internal) email:
    http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/pub_rel/presse/2005/m p3/index_d.html

    translation:
    Subject: Filename extensions for Layer3: .mp3
    Hello,
    according to a huge ammount of opinions in our poll: The extension for ISO MPEG Audio Layer 3 is .mp3. In other words, we should watch upcoming WWW-pages, shareware, demos etc., for them not to use .bit-extensions. There is a reason, believe me :-)
    Juergen Zeller