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MP3 Format Still Gathering Momentum
PoliTech sends us over to Billboard.com for a detailed article about the coming tipping point in the music business in favor of MP3. The two biggest drivers pushing Warner and Sony BMG toward MP3 are an upcoming massive Amazon-Pepsi download giveaway and a positive move by the usually maligned Wal-Mart (according to sources): "...Wal-Mart [alerted] Warner Music Group and Sony BMG that it will pull their music files in the Windows Media Audio format from walmart.com some time between mid-December and mid-January, if the labels haven't yet provided the music in MP3 format."
There is nothing they are going to do that convinces me sound isn't free. I have been to over 75 concerts if they want my money I am more than willing to pay to see a band worth it.
Unfortunately, No, the mean straight mp3s. Because mp3s are now like .doc files apparently. Even though there are alternatives that are superior, and yes, cheaper, people still want mp3s the way they want Microsoft Office.
5) Despite the fact that the MP3 technology is over a decade old, encoders are still getting better. You only have to look at the progress LAME has made (particularly the 3.90 and 3.97 'milestone' releases) in not just surpassing the quality of other once-popular MP3 encoders such as Fraunhofer and Xing but in some more recent listening tests even equalling its successor, at ~128kbps VBR, let alone the more high quality VBR presets (V0/V2) that many people rip in and that most pirated releases are released in via the scene.
But Microsoft Office is superior to competition, where as MP3 is not.
No, it's not. OpenOffice is freely downloadable, and does everything almost anyone needs in an office suite. MS Office may be preferred by some (mostly due to brand loyalty most likely), but it definitely doesn't do anything extra that makes it worth $500 more than OO.
BTW, I'm assuming you mean "superior" in a general sense, where all features (including price) are taken into consideration. A Ferrari is a superior car to a Civic only if you have an unlimited budget, for instance. If your income is $40k, a Ferrari is not a superior choice.
Apple has their own proprietary format called AAC; iTunes Music Store downloads are in AAC format, some of them DRMed but some not. In the battle for the hearts and minds of music fans, Microsoft will never support AAC, and Apple will never support WMA. So MP3 is left as the common denominator.
(AAC isn't as proprietary as WMA in that the file format is publicly documented, but it is patent-encumbered so that Free Software implementations such as faad and faac are illegal in countries like the US that recognize software patents. Unlike MP3, there is no free license for decoders, one has to pay for a patent license for them.)
I can imagine that Walmart.com's tech support has gotten pretty sick of fielding complaints that their downloads don't work on iPods...
Request your free CD of my piano music.
WMA is just a codec, and plays just fine on my Ubuntu machine. I'm pretty sure there's nothing that MS can do to take that away from me (technically, at least). While this is generally true, WMA and WMVs both are excellent vectors for dreaded DRM setups. Note that not all WMAs and WMVs carry it, but I prefer to stick with a format that is never really DRM'd in the first place, even if I have the same song, for example, in a non-blocked format or encapsulation. But you are indeed right about all that in your post. I just prefer to go by formats not designed by a company already somewhat infamous for trying to control my computer usage. (Microsoft is big on DRM and Trusted Computing, both of which rape the end user in the long run.) This is one of the big reasons why I'll never touch Windows Media Player or iTunes with a long pole. I must give Apple credit, however. They've been making some progress by stripping some DRM from iTunes, but not enough for my tastes. Just my opinion. Take it or leave it.
This is an interesting problem, because the companies have to choose between interoperability and customer choice. The *only* way to guarantee that a file will play on a digital music player is to sell it in MP3. One point of moving away from DRM is to end the format war. However, if an average consumer buys an AAC or OGG file and finds that it won't play on their MP3 player (car stereo, set-top-box, digital picture frame, whatever) they're going to be pissed and the format war will continue to rage on.
So I get the desire for Ogg, but to get to a market where format is not an issue, the music companies have to mandate MP3.
How 'bout better than completely-closed-and-would-like-to-be-platform-locked-codec?
I love ogg, and I hope it becomes the eventual de facto standard... but if someone chooses mp3 over wma/aac, well, I'm not going to spit on them.
ogg > mp3 > aac >= wma
In other words, the world (and moral values included therein) does not exist in a binary state. Things are not simply Good or Evil. Thanks for your troll though.
Bill
So, you are saying that we can start including WMA codec in all of linux's everywhere without any issues from any countries legal entities? And I as a developer of a commercial radio/TV/Stereo running linux will have absolutely NO issue getting a license from MS for a reasonable Price? What do you mean no. But you said that I was spouting falsehoods. Or are you STILL not grasping at how much MS controls on this issue?
Keep in mind that those who control MP3 have no issues with licensing on commercial Linux/BSD. But MS has other ideas in mind. This really is about freedom. And yes, my post stated that I prefer Ogg, but I will settle for MP3 for the reasons that I just stated. Hopefully, you will re-consider your statements
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Because the audio quality is good enough for the vast majority of people and file size isn't an issue for most people, either. There's just no compelling reason to force an entire industry to move to a better format. MP3 is not a broken format. There is no good reason to replace it.
At times it may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good. -- Margaret Meade
A) WMA does have better audio quality than MP3, by a factor of 1.5 to 2 times. And this is a good thing as all decoding chips in portable music players all have WMA support, unless it is crippled like the iPod. So you can throw your songs in WMA at 64 or 128 and have almost twice the fidelity of an MP3, especially when you add in better variable bit rate support, etc.
Proof please? I've never seen this substantiated. Also, how do you quantify "better audio quality" numerically?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Wouldn't there have to be something else to be tipping away from first?
I mean since 1996 MP3 has been it. Period. Where was nothing before it.
All compressed audio formats that came before either sounded like crap or were some secret sauce, that was closed source close specs, that you had to pay $50,000+ for and had to program windows library's to use.
Yes AAC came out in 1997 and it's actually better then MP3 in almost all measures, but there still isn't any decent application to use it.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
That is just not true. There are costs:
- You have to pay your engineers to research and implement support. In fact, there may be a validated and certified MP3 implementation already available for your hardware, but not an OGG implementation.
- You have to pay your lawyers to verify that it's patent- and royalty-free.
- You may need to increase the amount of processing power or memory to handle the additional codec.
- You'll need to perform additional testing to make sure OGG files actually work.
- You'll need to account for additional support costs if the OGG support is broken but the MP3 support isn't.
- You have to have your marketing department do extra research to determine if the additional sales of your media player because of OGG support cover the additional costs.
The fact that there are no licensing costs may be inconsequential compared to the costs of just adding the feature to the product.And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Repetition does not engender truth.
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Ahem, seems like a short history lesson is in order.. *Pulls out a slide rule and a stern expression*..
MP3 has several things on it's side that have been successful for other products in historical situations:
1. all things being equal, the sexier sounding name wins. And "empeethree" has a simplistic, yet technical sound to it. Whereas AAC and WMA can be thrown right out the window. Ogg has some appeal, but nowhere near the sexiness of mp3.
2. Recognition.. whenever a brand has become synonymous with the whole technology they have had the advantage of immediate recognition, this is a major marketing advantage (free publicity anyone?). A lot of who use WMA will still talk about their "MP3 songs".
3. Now.. as to being "inferior" technically. You need only to look at things like DC and AC, VHS and Betamax or Amiga and PC (oh boy, am I gonna get it for that last one) to see that the technically superior solution is not always the one that ends up on top.
However, while the wide proliferation of MP3 *SEEMS* to guarantee it's future based on similar historical events, there is always one historical factor that could change it all: A new technology that offers a decisive advantage over MP3 and manages to capture a fanatical core fanbase. Such pieces of technology have many times overtaken rivals with near total market dominance (does anyone remember Atari, 3Dfx, or Altavista?).
But until something earthshattering comes forth, I see cool runnings for the old, venerable, MP3.
And when you think about it, Ogg Vorbis is the codec equivalent of Esperanto. Everyone can understand the reason to use it, but hardly anyone actually does. If you do use it, you will end up being incompatible with the rest of the world because they just found it easier to use the established codec/language.
Codecs aren't necessarily like languages. I don't bother learning Esperanto because there's no one I can talk to with it; I'd probably have better success learning Klingon. However, a music codec is just a way for me to store music on my computer and portable music player. Why should I care about compatibility? I don't download my music from online music stores (because I refuse to purchase lossy-compressed music in a codec not of my choosing), I don't pirate my music (because I like having the original CDs), and I don't share my music with my friends (none of my friends like my music anyway). So it's just as easy for me to rip my CDs to Ogg as MP3; I just had to make sure I got a portable player which supports Ogg, which I did.
Similarly, I'm also one of the rare people who uses a Dvorak keyboard. I really don't care if every other keyboard out there is QWERTY; I prefer Dvorak. Of course, I can type on either (just like I can still play MP3s on my portable player or my computer), so I don't have problems interoperating, but people who try to use my computer at home usually find themselves totally unable to type. Their problem, not mine.
Playing ogg files on my ipod drops the playback time from 8 hours to around 3, so i assume it is a technical issue.
The point isn't that iPods and other players don't have the power to decode Oggs (hell, they all do video, which is in a whole 'nother league), but more processing power sucks up more juice, and that's pretty crucial for portable devices. And we're talking about QUITE A BIT more battery power... like a 25% loss in consumption. Most people will trade the small decrease in sound quality just for that, even before we talk about it's widespread use.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Bandwidth is still an issue. Connection speeds don't increase like hard drive sizes. There is also the cost, which remains the same: the quality difference between a transparent Vorbis encoded file and FLAC is zero, but the FLAC file is almost 10 times bigger. Even for slightly less than transparent quality, that tiny quality difference costs nearly 10 times the file size.
Yeah, but .wav/PCM is better than either of them...FLAC if you need compressed.
I'm worried that all of this is leading to a time where you can only find the inferior lossy formats of music!?!?
I'd still rather get a CD, and rip it to lossless for home audio, and then to lossy for portables or the car...two of the worst listening environments there are.....
Doesn't anybody appreciate fidelity any longer?
It isn't like bandwidth is that big of a roadblock any longer...why not offer selections in a lossless format online if you must purchase online?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
[...] and a positive move by the usually maligned Wal-Mart
You say this as if Wal-Mart was somehow being charitable or virtuous instead of plotting to drown puppies. Wal-Mart just does what its management thinks will be profitable without much regard to ethics one way or another. Plainly, Wal-Mart management thinks they'll make more money with MP3 than WMA. That's all. If they thought they could somehow make money from drowning puppies, they'd do that, too, and if anyone objected, some PR drone would be sent out with a press release declaring that drowned puppies is what Wal-Mart customers really want, and what's more, it's good for America.
Although it may seem so at times, giant corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft really aren't out to do harm. It just happens that doing harm to a largely captive audience is often a lot more profitable than charging a fair price for quality goods and services and treating employees well. It's just Adam Smith's invisible hand grabbing you by the short hairs.
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