Kaitlyn Bechard

Bechard1

Ms. Collins
BTT101-1
12/16/16
Works Cited
MP3, which stands for MPEG Audio Layer 3, is a music audio format that has
revolutionized the music world by starting a whole new culture, especially on the
web. Every music lover is aware of the word MP3, but very few know the whys and
hows of it.

How it all began - Karlheinz Brandenburg and Dieter Seitzer

It all began way back in 1977, when Karlheinz Brandenburg, a specialist in
mathematics and electronics in Germany, started researching methods of
compressing music. At the same time Prof. Dieter Seitzer of Erlangen-Nuremberg
University, Germany, also began his struggle of trying to compress music over
phone lines. It was the advancement of digital technology that had made them
think of compressing music. They knew that existent music was almost impossible
to send over phone lines. So, they wanted to produce a music file that was much
smaller and yet sound the same as the original uncompressed audio.

Karlheinz Brandenburg and Dieter Seitzer continued working independently till

1987, when the Fraunhofer Institut in Germany undertook the research project
under code-name EUREKA project EU147, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). Both
Karlheinz Brandenburg and Dieter Seitzer joined the project along with Bernhard
Grill, Thomas Sporer, Bernd Kurten, and Ernst Eberlein. In 1989, the MP3
technology was finally developed and its patent (German) was obtained.

Kaitlyn Bechard

Bechard1

Ms. Collins
BTT101-1
12/16/16
Works Cited
Meanwhile, in 1988, an international working group of ISO/IEC charged with the
development of video and audio encoding standards, called the Motion Pictures
Experts Group, or MPEG, was formed. MPEG soon started testing the various audio
codecs submitted to it for approval. The ones that excelled in the testing were
taken and further refined and integrated into one codec. It was here that Karlheinz
Brandenburgs and Dieter Seitzers audio coding algorithm was used as the basis
and integrated into MPEGs new audio codec. The new codec was released in 1992
as MPEG-1. The standard was later developed into MPEG-2 and published in 1994.
The third version, MPEG Audio Layer 3, or MP3 was released on November 26,
1996, and the United States patent was issued. Fraunhofer Institut soon began
asking for patent rights, and in September 1998 finally won. Now all developers of
MP3 encoders/rippers and decoders/players have to pay a licensing fee to
Fraunhofer.

First Music In MP3

In February 1999, SubPop became the first company to produce and distribute
music tracks in the MP3 format. Soon after, the portable MP3 player appeared. The
popularity of MP3 was now fast rising, especially on the internet. Time saw the
music industry completely changed. No longer were music lovers rushing to stores
as music could now be easily downloaded from the Internet or "ripped" from a
music CD. Neither was there need to search for an audio CD that one wanted to

Kaitlyn Bechard

Bechard1

Ms. Collins
BTT101-1
12/16/16
Works Cited
hear, because now it was possible to store thousands of songs on a small portable
player and then search by title, artist, album or genre. Whether at home or outside,
all that had to be done to listen to a song was press a button.

MP3 Players
The MP3 Player also progressed with time. The very first commercially released
Player was the MPMan F10, launched by Koreas Saehan Information Systems in
1998. It was a 91 x 70 x 165.5 mm device that contained 32MB of Flash storage,
and had to be connected to a parallel port on a PC to copy songs. Later the same
year, another player, the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 was released in the U.S.
This, too, had 32MB of storage and had to be connected to a parallel port. The only
difference was that it contained a Smart Media slot that allowed users to increase
storage space. Despite the release and wide use of these MP3 players, the explosive
growth came in 2003, when Apple allowed Windows PC owners to use the iPod,
their new MP3 device. The initial iPod, released in 2001, was meant only for
Macintosh users. It was the first hard-drive based device with 5 GB of space. Today
there is a wide range of devices produced by hundreds of software companies the
world over that users can select from, depending on their requirements. These
players may be categorized on the basis of their storage media flash based, hard
drive based, MP3 CD, and hybrid. The most popular players today (according to
CNET) are Apple iPod, Microsoft Zune, Archos WiFi, Creative Zen, and iRiver Clix.

Kaitlyn Bechard

Bechard1

Ms. Collins
BTT101-1
12/16/16
Works Cited

Limitations Of MP3 Give Birth To Other Audio Formats

Despite its unprecedented popularity, MP3 does have its limitations. Among them
time resolution is too low, it often creates echoes, coding efficiency is not very good
due to double filter banks, no scale factor bands for high frequencies, and encoding
delays due to internal handling of bit reservoir. Due to these deficiencies several
new audio formats were developed. The most poplar of these alternatives to MP3
are AAC and WMA. These are just as widely supported as MP3 and do not have the
limitations that MP3 has. Other audio formats that though are not as widely
supported but are still popular because they are open sourced and completely free,
are Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Speex.

Regardless of everything, MP3 continues to be the dominant music audio format

and the favorite of music lovers. The reasons for this are simple it is free, is easy
to make, requires a much smaller saving space, and most music software include
options to create or convert files to MP3. Today there are thousands of websites
that offer MP3 music files for download, and millions of music lovers from all over
the world are downloading music daily. Many sites are illegal, so in order to avoid
risks and safety concerns, it is important to go for legal ones which have been
sanctioned by the music industry. The most popular of these are Rhapsody, Napster,
iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, and Epitonic.

Kaitlyn Bechard

Bechard1

Ms. Collins
BTT101-1
12/16/16
Works Cited

It will not be wrong to say that MP3 has revolutionized the music industry. Since the
time it has appeared, it has become a cultural phenomenon, something much more
than mere technology. It has brought about a new era in the music industry.