'MP3' Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary

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."

Comments

Patent Issues?

[gbulmash]

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

Re:Patent Issues?

[AKAImBatman]

I don't know about lawsuits, but this article touches upon the cease and desist letters they sent out. Such a move *could* have killed MP3s, except that Thomson's licensing is very reasonable.

For one, you don't need a license for "private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00."

Beyond that, their royalty rates are as little as $0.75 per copy, or a one time fee of $50-60K.

Re:Patent Issues?

[donutz]

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...

Somewhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

... a record executive weeps.

10th anniversary for mp3?

[FerretFrottage]

I thought based on its compression ratio this would just be the 1st anniversary for mp3. Granted some things in those 10 years are lost, but we can't remember everything can we?

Evil Bit set by 1998

[RobertB-DC]

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.

MP3 in Name Only

[ndansmith]

. . . 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.

That is the perception, at least, on the internet. Music files will probably be "MP3" for a long time, just like Pepsi is often referred to generically as a "Coke." iTunes Music Store, for example, uses .m4a and .m4p (their AAC format) file extensions. Considering that iTunes Music Store sells so many of these files (hundreds of millions), and that iTunes (a popular cross-platform music player) rips by default to .m4a, and that .mp3 is clearly behind the curve of audio compression technology, the time may be coming soon when .mp3 is king in name only.

The bad old days...

[decipher_saint]

When I was eighteen,
I downloaded a very good CD,
A very good CD that took the whole night to grab,
We found it on IRC
My handle was brian_mcgee
We burned it at 2 times for free
When I was eighteen...

With apologies to Homer, 1995 seems so long ago now...

Re:The bad old days...

[lukewarmfusion]

I believe the apologies should really go to Frank Sinatra or Ervin M. Drake...

(But the version from the Simpsons was wonderful, too.)

Spoiled bastards...

[MicroPat]

About 7 years ago, I ripped all my CD's to MP3, amazed at how much precious HDD space I could save while accessing all my music via the same source! Now, here I am, in the hard disk gigacheap days, stuck with these lossy-format buggers while the new kids on the block rip to their slightly larger lossless formats. You lucky, spoiled bastards.

Why OGG Is "Better"

[jcole]

http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp

* Vorbis files can compress to a smaller file size and still sound fine
* Vorbis' better compression will cut down on bandwidth costs
* For a given file size, Vorbis sounds better than MP3.
* If you decide to sell your music in MP3 format, you are responsible for paying Fraunhofer a percentage of each sale because you are using their patents.
* Vorbis is patent and license-free, so you will never need to pay anyone in order to sell, give away, or stream your own music.
* Epic Games (the makers of Unreal Tournament, et. al.) have used Vorbis in their games ever since releasing Unreal Tournament 2003 to compress game music without having per-game license fees sap profits from every game sold.
* Vorbis saves developers money by avoiding patent-license fees.
* Ogg Vorbis has been designed to completely replace all proprietary, patented audio formats. That means that you can encode all your music or audio content in Vorbis and never look back.

Need I say more?

-Joe

Why OGG Is Worse

[teneighty]

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.