When were MP3s invented?
19673#2
In the aspects of MP3 pertaining to audio compression—the aspect of the standard most apparent to end-users (and for which is it best known)—MP3 uses lossy data-compression to encode data using inexact approximations and the partial discarding of data. This allows a large reduction in file sizes when compared to uncompressed audio. The combination of small size and acceptable fidelity led to a boom in the distribution of music over the Internet in the mid- to late-1990s, with MP3 serving as an enabling technology at a time when bandwidth and storage were still at a premium. The MP3 format soon became associated with controversies surrounding copyright infringement, music piracy, and the file ripping/sharing services MP3.com and Napster, among others. With the advent of portable media players, a product category also including smartphones, MP3 support remains near-universal.
MP3
19673#26
On 7 July 1994, the Fraunhofer Society released the first software MP3 encoder called l3enc. The filename extension ".mp3" was chosen by the Fraunhofer team on 14 July 1995 (previously, the files had been named ".bit"). With the first real-time software MP3 player WinPlay3 (released 9 September 1995) many people were able to encode and play back MP3 files on their PCs. Because of the relatively small hard drives back in that time (≈500–1000 MB) lossy compression was essential to store non-instrument based (see tracker and MIDI) music for playback on computer. As sound scholar Jonathan Sterne notes, "An Australian hacker acquired l3enc using a stolen credit card. The hacker then reverse-engineered the software, wrote a new user interface, and redistributed it for free, naming it "thank you Fraunhofer"".
MP3
19673#19
The algorithms for MPEG-1 Audio Layer I, II and III were approved in 1991 and finalized in 1992 as part of MPEG-1, the first standard suite by MPEG, which resulted in the international standard ISO/IEC 11172-3 (a.k.a. "MPEG-1 Audio" or "MPEG-1 Part 3"), published in 1993. Files or data streams conforming to this standard must handle sample rates of 48k, 44100 and 32k and continue to be supported by current MP3 players and decoders. Thus the first generation of MP3 defined 14*3=42 interpretations of MP3 frame data structures and size layouts.
MP3
553671#64
Constraining Innovators: In this section Lessig describes how innovators are being constrained and amongst the examples he uses he gives the company MP3.com. In 2000 this company launched a service that would allow users to have a "lockbox" to which they could upload their music and access it anywhere. Shortly after the service was launched several major record companies sued the company and judgement was later entered for Vivendi against MP3.com. A year later Vivendi bought MP3.com. He also describes how innovators are hampered both the uncertainty in the law and the content industry's attempt to use to law to regulate the internet in an attempt to protect their interests. Also in this section he describes how, when new technologies are invented, Congress has attempted to strike a balance so as to protect these new technologies from the older ones. He suggests that this balance has now changed and uses as an example Internet radio which he suggests has been burdened by regulations and royalty payments that broadcasters have not been.
Free Culture (book)
2776113#0
Founded in 1998, the same year as MP3.com, MP3 Newswire is the oldest active news site devoted to digital media technology. Notable for its series of essays that chronicled the rise of digital music and the Internet’s acrimonious relationship with the record industry, MP3 Newswire initially was started to review and report on the latest products and technological advances. But opinion pieces were few and far between in the pre and early Napster days and MP3 Newswire filled the gap.
MP3 Newswire
1242833#1
Among the few first MP3 blogs were Tonspion, Buzzgrinder, Fluxblog, Stereogum and Said the Gramophone. Tonspion is the first MP3 blog in Germany and started in 1998 with reviews and downloads that international artists and labels gave out free on the web. Buzzgrinder began in 2001 as a way for musician SethW to fill time on the road. Stereogum began as a music-related LiveJournal in 2002, though its format was focused on indie/pop gossip rather than MP3s. Fluxblog (also founded in 2002) trumpeted LCD Soundsystem's "Yeah (Stupid Version)" in early 2004 brought increased attention to MP3 blogs, while Montreal-based Said the Gramophone, founded in 2003, was among the first websites to write about artists like Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and Tune-Yards. A July, 2004 story by Reuters and an August, 2004 story on National Public Radio further galvanized the trend, and today there are thousands of MP3 blogs covering a cornucopia of musical styles.
MP3 blog
1560437#17
"Samsung SPH-M2100", the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999. "Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar)" launched in 2000 was the first cell phone to have MP3 music capabilities in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across the globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone. In 2007, the installed base of phones that could play media was over 1 billion.
Portable media player
19673#28
In November 1997, the website mp3.com was offering thousands of MP3s created by independent artists for free. The small size of MP3 files enabled widespread peer-to-peer file sharing of music ripped from CDs, which would have previously been nearly impossible. The first large peer-to-peer filesharing network, Napster, was launched in 1999. The ease of creating and sharing MP3s resulted in widespread copyright infringement. Major record companies argued that this free sharing of music reduced sales, and called it "music piracy". They reacted by pursuing lawsuits against Napster (which was eventually shut down and later sold) and against individual users who engaged in file sharing.
MP3
146180#15
While MP3 is now patent-free, in 2001 it was both patented and entrenched, as noted by Richard Stallman in that year (in justifying a liberal license for Ogg Vorbis):
there is […] the danger that people will settle on MP3 format even though it is patented, and we won't be *allowed* to write free encoders for the most popular format. […] Ordinarily, if someone decides not to use a copylefted program because the license doesn't please him, that's his loss not ours. But if he rejects the Ogg/Vorbis code because of the license, and uses MP3 instead, then the problem rebounds on us—because his continued use of MP3 may help MP3 to become and stay entrenched.
Vendor lock-in
51172107#29
On September 25, 2007, Amazon Music, a online music store, was launched as Amazon MP3 in the US selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management. (In addition to copyright law, Amazon's terms of use agreements restrict use of the MP3s, but Amazon does not use digital rights management (DRM) to enforce those terms.) In addition to independent music labels, Amazon MP3 primarily sells music from the "Big 4" record labels: EMI, Universal, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony Music. Prior to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a music store with a variable pricing model based on demand. Amazon MP3 was the first online offering of DRM-free music from all four major record companies.
In November 2007, the Kindle Store was launched as an e-book e-commerce store and can be accessed from any Amazon Kindle, Fire tablet or Kindle mobile app. At its launch, the store had more than 88,000 digital titles available. This number increased to more than 765,000 by August 2011 and as of January 2017 there were over five million e-books available in the U.S.
List of Amazon products and services