The MP3 format that revolutionized the music industry is already free as the wind: goodbye to patents
When you download video on the internet sometimes you use AVI or MKV but do you know the differences between them? When you download video on the internet you sometimes use AVI or MKV but do you know the differences between them?
This was the first industry guy to realize that the MP3 they had rejected was killing them. This was the first industry guy to realize that the MP3 they had rejected was killing them.
Services like Spotify already have more customers than digital music buying Services like Spotify already have more customers than digital music buying
The MP3 format revolutionized the world of music. For better or worse, this audio coding format made it possible to listen to (and share) music through the Internet so that the entire industry ended up adopting this or other solutions to end up making the leap to a model in which the physical format gave prominence to downloads and streaming.
The technology, however, was subject to patents that were defended by Technicolor, but those patents – still valid for encoders, for example – expired on April 16, 2017 completely. The MP3 is now freer than ever.
Until never, MP3 patents
Those responsible for Fraunhofer IIS explained a few days ago how “on April 23, 2017, the Technicolor mp3 licensing program for certain Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS patents and software related to the mp3 has expired.”
Fraun
In that message, all those who have licensed the technology were thanked for their support of a format that became the “defacto audio codec worldwide over the past two decades,” and highlighted that even with more efficient audio codecs, mp3 is still “very popular with consumers”. The success of MP3 was parallel to that of the legendary Winamp, the player that became that symbol of a change of air in the audio industry.
These patents have been very beneficial for their owners: it is estimated that thanks to them the Fraunhofer Society achieved revenues that reached 100 million euros in 2005. Those amounts of money made many others try to take a piece of that juicy cake, and the lawsuits and lawsuits surrounding who owned what in the MP3 segment have been frequent.
Linux distros, among the big winners
These alternatives still fail to undermine the popularity of the MP3 format, which for the purpose of patent validity can be used without restrictions in all types of scenarios.
Fedora
One of the best known cases was that of Linux distributions, in which we often found ourselves without native reproduction of MP3 content by those patents. In the Fedora documentation, for example, it was indicated how since October 11, 2016 this distribution could already include MP3 players since the patents for music reproduction had expired.
The encoding of MP3 files – creating them from a CD in Fedora, for example – was not “permissible because it requires proprietary technologies and the patent owner has not provided licenses compatible with Fedora requirements.” Neither Technicolor wanted to assign, nor Fedora (or any other distribution) to pay for those licenses.
It was possible to install a posteriori players that provided this option, but the developers of the distributions preferred to be cured in health in this section: now any “distro” may finally include native support for reproduction, but now also for coding.
The alternatives exist, but MP3 does not seem to lose strength
The MP3 format (MPEG-1 Layer 3) has undoubtedly been the “lost” audio format — we lose data in encoding — the most popular in history, but it is certainly not technically the best. The rise of the format and its deficiencies made in fact that many others tried to develop alternatives with which to conquer the market.
Mp31
Among these codecs is the AAC family of formats, which does not require the payment of licenses to stream or distribute content in that format. Of course, there are patents for the development of AAC codecs, which forces those who implement Open Source software that takes advantage of this format to distribute it only with the code, as in the case of the famous FFMpeg.
