![]() So is it the end of an era? We may still use MP3s, but when the people who spent the better part of a decade creating it say the jig is up, we should probably start paying attention. (That spring meeting in which the MP3 was declared dead came months later, after another failed pitch that denied it being standardized and widely adopted.) A little later, Fraunhofer began giving away the software that consumers needed to turn compact discs into MP3s at home. In early 1995, the format was on life support, with one licensing deal being the use of the technology by hockey arenas across the U.S. Another innovation the team failed to leverage? The portable MP3 player. ![]() Other failures hinged on the need for the world to catch up with the technology's possibilities: Along the way, one computer engineer on the team had a patent for a music streaming service denied by the German government because it was technologically absurd at the time. It was repeatedly beleaguered by clever corporate sabotage and later by piracy. Fraunhofer - in competing for the legitimacy it needed to persuade tech companies to actually use MP3s, and so actually make money - hit numerous speed bumps. The team of engineers that invented the format was attempting to make it possible to send audio over telephone lines, which could only transmit small amounts of data. The Record The MP3: A History Of Innovation And Betrayalīernhard Grill, director of that Fraunhofer division and one of the principals in the development of the MP3, told NPR over email that another audio format, AAC - or "Advanced Audio Coding," which his organization also helped create - is now the "de facto standard for music download and videos on mobile phones." He said AAC is "more efficient than MP3 and offers a lot more functionality."Īs Witt illustrates throughout his excellent opening chapters, the MP3, before upending the musical world as we knew it, almost died in the research lab. (On Tuesday, the tech giant passed $800 billion in market capitalization, the first U.S. Soon, the MP3 not only upended the recording industry but, thanks to the iPod, also contributed to Apple's late-'90s transformation into one of the most successful companies in history. That ironic conference room eulogy actually took place just before the compression algorithm caught on (don't worry, we'll explain in a bit). So opens Stephen Witt's How Music Got Free, an investigation into the forced digitization and subsequent decimation of the music business, from which it has only very recently started to recover. "The death of the MP3 was announced in a conference room in Erlangen, Germany, in the spring of 1995." The iPod helped turn around Apple's fortunes and brand identity, while the creators of the MP3 had regarded a portable player as a mere storage device. A 2003 display for the iTunes Music Store ushers in a new age for the music business, shortly after its introduction.
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