MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 or MP3 for short has become a common audio format that is deployed to transfer and playback music on digital audio player. It was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group which included amongst others, Fraunhofer of Germany, Thomson-Brandt, AT&T-Bell Labs of USA, and CCETT. It obtained an ISO/IEC standard in 1991.
MP3 compressed the original audio without any loss of its original quality. The reduction in data was convenient for recording and storage. A CD file could be compressed with MP3 to one-tenth of its original size. This could be achieved with 128 kbits/s which is a mid-range bit rate setting. Auditory masking is done that gives this compression. It was in 1994 that the first MP3 software encoder was introduced. The file extension name originally was .bit. This was altered to .mp3 in 1995. In the same year, Winplay3 was launched. This was the first real time software encoder to be introduced in the market. Very soon, audio files conversion to MP3 files began. These could be played back in the personal computers. MP3 became a rave hit and the Internet hastened its fame. MP3 soon became much used assisted by Winamp that was released in 1997 and the Unix audio player mpg123 in 1998. MP3 began to be offered free in the later part of 1997 when mp3.com itself offered it free. Compact discs were now ripped and peer to peer transfer of music files became rampant. The launch of Napster in 1999 further fueled large scale peer to peer file transfers. Copyright violations proliferated with allegations flying around. No doubt there was a spate of litigations in the court.
MP3 players are of three types. They are the hard drives, micro hard drives and flash based MP3 players. The hard drive based MP3 players is heaviest and largest amongst them. Their capacity is as large as ten gigabytes and more, and is able to hold some 2,900 MP3 files. Similar to this is the micro hard rive based players but with lesser internal storage capacity and smaller size. Their capacity is only six gigabytes which can hold about 1,700 MP3 files. Both hard rive and micro hard drive based MP3 players come with rechargeable batteries. The most compact of them is the flash based MP3 players as it does not have any moving parts. They use very little power. Their internal storage capacity is also very low and range from 32 megabytes to only two gigabytes. With the introduction of WiFi connectivity, it became possible to download music from the Internet. The first such one that was introduced was Sandisk Sansa Connect MP3 player.
While the unauthorized sharing continues extensively, many companies began selling music in MP3 format such as Xiie.net, Bleep, Juno Records, Beatport, eMusic, Amazon.com and Zune Marketplace. There have been patent and licensing related disputes over MP3 involving Thomson Consumer Electronics, Fraunhofer Institute, Sisvel S.p.A., SanDisk, Texas MP3 Technologies, Apple, Samsung Electronics, Texas MP3 Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent and some more.
