DEFINITION OF MP3
MP3 is an acronym derived from MPEG Audio Layer III. It is a digital audio format or, more specifically, a compression format for this type of audio.
To generate an MP3 file, an algorithm is used that allows reducing the size or weight of the file that stores the sound, although with a certain loss of quality. Said loss, in any case, is not usually significant, which is why MP3 is the most widely used format in computers and portable players.
German sound engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg is singled out as the creator of the MP3. He was among those responsible for the development of the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) and in the 1980s he began working on audio compression. As early as 1995, it started using the .mp3 extension for files with compressed audio under this system.
The MP3 format was a revolution in the way of distributing and consuming digital audio. MP3 files are much lighter (and therefore easier to transfer or download) than files on an audio CD or CDDA. With the advancement of Internet connections, the download of entire discs whose songs are compressed in MP3 was facilitated.
The digital audio player is also known as MP3. These devices can save and play MP3 files, although they are generally able to work with other formats as well.
A person, for example, can store two hundred songs in one MP3 and then listen to them wherever and whenever they want. All this tells us that MP3 was a great invention that revolutionized the way we store and listen to our music, facilitating actions such as moving our entire music collection from one country to another at a level that in the past would have been a luxury. of few people.
However, everything surrounding this compression format is not positive. First of all we must talk about piracy: in its early years, MP3 was synonymous with “stolen music”, since due to the small size of the files it was possible to upload entire discs to the Internet for any user to download freely. This did not go unnoticed by the record labels, much less for the artists, but it was a phenomenon that generated great losses of money in the music industry.
One of the measures that was gradually bringing the industry to life was the sale of music in digital format, both MP3 and AAC (the iTunes format), among others; we could say that he adopted the saying “if you can’t against them, join them”. Unlike pirated discs, purchased ones come with the digital booklet, whose quality is impeccable and far superior to the scanned version that pirates usually include in their packages, as well as certain items that are not found on the physical disk.
In addition to combating illegal downloading with the sale and inclusion of exclusive material, another determining factor was quality: one of the outstanding characteristics of the MP3 format is that it can offer different degrees of compression, and the differences between very small files (such as being the 96 kbps) and the big ones (320 kbps) is appreciated without effort.
Undoubtedly, the eventual offers go a long way in convincing people to buy rather than steal. But none of this can change the mindset of those who are absolutely stuck in their ideas, those people who download games, movies, music and books without paying for them, claiming that “the creators already have enough money.”
