Wait, people thought mp3 was dead because of that announcement?! O_o I feel like people have lost touch with the history and the entire reason many Linux distros do not distribute mp3 codecs!
Some of these writers/editors really need to spend each day reading at least one headline from that day in 2016, 2015 .. all the way back to 1999.
MP3 is now more free/libre, or at least when it comes to encoding/decoding. Patents are one of the reasons people have been so hesitant about H.264 and why we see things like WebM.
Personally, I've encoded in FLAC for years, and even in the early days (2003-ish) I was backing up CDs to oggs instead of mp3s. Unless you're really concerned about space today, download your music in a lossless format. Sites like Bandcamp and CDBaby now support lossless (FLAC and ALAC)
People (some/many) believe what they read. Some CEOs in some corners of the planet will rush to their CIO and tell them "I don't know what this mp3 is but lets switch to aac A-S-A-P!!!". Then the poor CTO (if he/she has a technical background) will have to take 15mins to explain to the CEO that "mp3 is not dead, the patent is gone so not it's absolutely free, while for aac we'll have to be paying ABC amount for our XYZ product/service".
I guess the current aac patent holders are smiling now :)
mp3's are the jpeg of the audio world. Maximum compatibility with any and all ancient electronics, and now totally free. I don't think we'll ever be rid of it. And really that's fine because at high bitrate mp3 is very usable and mp3 does a great job at what it does like jpeg does: it dramatically reduces the data size compared to raw (wav to mp3 savings is dramatically greater than mp3 to any other audio format savings).
I still use mp3s - compatibility is generally better than any other format and take up a more reasonable amount of space than lossless formats. I really don't hear a difference between an mp3 and a lossless version, and that is with a much better ear than most non-musically trained (I have given useful critiques to artists on WIPs related to mixing & mastering). In addition, I have over 1 TB of music that is almost wholly mp3s - it's not terribly practical for me to have that in lossless either.
People thought mp3 was dead because of they have lost (or never had one) critical thinking and believe everything (or just too much) that clever PR people try to convince them to believe.
I can understand why Fraunhofer made this statement (it is still despicable) but it is really sad to see how gullible people are.
Not sure why anyone would regard a patent expiration as a sign of its death. It should be the opposite! It's now free for everyone and in the public domain, and that is cause for celebration.
It's a bit surreal. Engadget interprets "becoming patent-free" as "being retired". Gizmodo interprets it as "it's dead". We're not in a world where file format fanboys have the writing prowess to hold positions in the media right?
the real story is why several techblogs spun the expiration of a patent to be the death of the mp3 format.
Clickbaity publishing out of control (has it ever been in control?).
Honestly I'm looking forward to Spotify running out of money and shutting down so this generation will wake up that they need to start duplicating and archiving their media before they lose it.
Have a strong feeling there is going to be a cultural black hole where large segments of music etc lost in the post-naptster/post-piratebay world because it only existed on the artists machine, Spotify's servers and YouTube's servers.
(I understand pirate bay is still kicking but its all certainly way more niche that it was 5-10 years ago)
I've gone the opposite route. After years of careful curating my music library, I started to feel chained to the past, listening to a handful of tracks over and over. Since music is connected to strong emotions, this would also bleed into other aspects of my life and cause me to be less forward-thinking.
I'm fully aware that Spotify and its competitors are deals with the Devil but if they allow me to feel less burdened, the price is worth it.
It's deeply hypocritical but I also secretly hope that at least a few people stick to archiving and curating just in case.
Thank you - my thoughts exactly. As an avid music collector and listener I understand that my interest in this issue probably isn't comparable to most other people, but I think there's no doubt that licensing deals will change/end and music starts to disappear from streaming services.
There are already and always have been large gaps in the streaming catalogs but those are mostly releases that have never been there in the first place. I guess it will be different when John Doe sees his Spotify library shrinking and realizes that he was just renting all this music.
"Have a strong feeling there is going to be a cultural black hole where large segments of music etc lost in the post-naptster/post-piratebay world because it only existed on the artists machine, Spotify's servers and YouTube's servers."
That has already happened several times. Anyone remember silent films? Most of the scores were never archived, so most of the original music that went to those films is lost to history.
I'm a happy Spotify user, but for discovery, not the actual playback.
Discover Weekly is highly helpful, and the Release Radar is basically functioning like my music RSS feed. I also use Spotify's save option as basically bookmarks on which albums to download.
Therefore, Spotify is still more than relevant to me, even though I'm keeping local copies of music. I can't really discover new stuff in my own library.
I'm a happy user of Spotify, but I have kept all of my MP3's and such locally. I am also well aware that Spotify may shut down some day, and I'll simply gather local copies of everything I like, during the shutdown period. It's not like they're going to shut down instantly from one day to the next, there'll be a reasonable warning period.
As for music disappearing, I have only ever seen that on my ISP's own streaming service, I've never actually seen it happen on Spotify.
I'm waiting for a mass movement of artists to offer direct sales at reasonable prices. I would love to own media files, but I currently don't even have the option of buying them in a sane (legal framework) and fair (to the artist) way at a reasonable price.
> AAC makes a lot of sense for low- and medium-quality applications where bandwidth is extremely limited or expensive, like phone calls and music-streaming services, or as sound for video, for which it’s the most widely supported format.
Nope; you can scratch "phone calls" from that list.
AAC (specifically, the AAC-LD variant) is not the best for low bitrate calls; you want a dedicated voice codec for that application.
AAC-LD is only geared toward voice in one parameter: frame size. It's basically just a "look, AAC can do this too if you want" feature.
Look at the remark there: "It can use a bit rate of 32 - 64kbit/s or higher". That's a whopping lot. 32 kbps is about the far-out upper bound on bit rate for using a voice codec. You can get very good call quality at half that.
I thought Opus was technically fine for phone and able to compete on quality. IIRC it only suffers from lack of use. On paper it seems to be the universal codec for audio.
MP3 is now as dead as the GIF. Why, I haven't seen a GIF for at least... 15 seconds.
At any rate, (pun intended), I'm perfectly happy with my vorbis files and not in any hurry to convert to MP3. But I'm glad I don't have to worry about the silly patent any longer.
It bugs me that "reputable" news outlets like Fortune Magazine were running stories which essentially amounted to a Fraunhofer press release with a couple of paragraphs tacked onto it.
Clearly there's absolutely no effort involved in being a journalist anymore.
> It bugs me that "reputable" news outlets like Fortune Magazine were running stories which essentially amounted to a Fraunhofer
You skipped a chapter on the history of the web. Formerly "reputable" outlets have transitioned to rubberstamping their brand on any blogger they think can help them preserve their business model, so while they might admittedly still be frontrunners in name recognition and still have credibility in narrower contexts, they have all but morphed into full-time clickbait farms.
One has to wonder if its actually just an AI doing web scraps looking for 'news' and posting a summary or just direct excerpts from the source. Then changing/adding a few things it knows are clickbait/headliners.
If this isn't being done, it seems like something that could potentially be achieved with current tech, if not now, then in the near future.
Related: I haven't heard whether popular free software such as Audacity, Linux distros, etc. will begin including LAME binaries by default as a result of the patent expiry. Anyone know if such plans exist?
A big argument for using lossless instead of lossy are Bluetooth headphones. When you're listening through them, you're essentially re-encoding one lossy format into another lossy format, which degrades the quality much more than each of the formats does by itself.
MP3 has been "dead" to me ever since the non patent encumbered formats started becoming popular. Mind you, I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS since the mid 90s... So I have a vested interest in open formats.
These days, all my music is in a lossless format anyway. Especially now that my phone has enough storage space for it.
Anyhow. I'd say that if anything... The patents expiring way the heck sooner would have been healthy for the format.
AAC was introduced in 1997, does any one know when will its patents expire as well?
And we haven't had any improvement in Audio compression since then. MP3 - AAC and That is it. All the others are at best AAC similar quality / bitrate.
At 256Kbps, the majority couldn't hear a difference between MP3 and AAC. At 128Kbps it is only slightly better.
We dont have anything like HEVC which is an order of magnitude better then, say MPEG-2 at low bitrate.
Disagree with the author on the technical merits that AAC only sounds marginally better than MP3 at 128kbps and higher. For certain audio shapes, MP3 is a rather bad™ compression (as is, to some extent JPEG for some image shapes), whereas AAC produces much better results due to different compression mechanics. Much like MPEG4 ASP and MPEG4 AVC and HEVC produce different compression artifacts, with ASP having much worse artifacts.
Well, it's not not patent incumbered, but there is no need to use it for anything besides playback of existing legacy media that doesn't have a lossless original. Otherwise just use Opus for playback purposes.
As a former cakewalk software user it used to piss me off royally that I had to pay for the MP3 license to unlock the feature. It was a trivial amount (19bucks?) and I understand why they thought it was a good idea(their way of sticking it to Fraunhofer, and a ridiculous fee) but it ended up feeling like the customer that just spent 500 bucks on software was the one getting screwed especially considering how much cross licensing cakewalk did/does.
Tangentially related: Being out of touch with the podcast scene for quite a while I was interested to follow the 'Overcast' link. Unfortunately that turned out to be for platforms I don't own.
If there are some passionate podcast listeners here,
1) do you have recommendations for an alternative to Overcast (ideally cross-platform, Android/Linux required, Windows desirable)?
2) can you recommend HN related (overlapping with the content here) podcasts?
[+] [-] djsumdog|8 years ago|reply
Some of these writers/editors really need to spend each day reading at least one headline from that day in 2016, 2015 .. all the way back to 1999.
MP3 is now more free/libre, or at least when it comes to encoding/decoding. Patents are one of the reasons people have been so hesitant about H.264 and why we see things like WebM.
Personally, I've encoded in FLAC for years, and even in the early days (2003-ish) I was backing up CDs to oggs instead of mp3s. Unless you're really concerned about space today, download your music in a lossless format. Sites like Bandcamp and CDBaby now support lossless (FLAC and ALAC)
[+] [-] HenryBemis|8 years ago|reply
I guess the current aac patent holders are smiling now :)
Confuse & conquer!!!
[+] [-] bnolsen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bahamut|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sunset|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eveningcoffee|8 years ago|reply
I can understand why Fraunhofer made this statement (it is still despicable) but it is really sad to see how gullible people are.
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|8 years ago|reply
I haven't used it in years, but I'm pretty sure Bandcamp will only accept lossless codecs.
[+] [-] shrimp_emoji|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] libeclipse|8 years ago|reply
Not sure why anyone would regard a patent expiration as a sign of its death. It should be the opposite! It's now free for everyone and in the public domain, and that is cause for celebration.
[+] [-] ygaf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nebabyte|8 years ago|reply
How so/any links or search terms for the aspects you're impressed by?
[+] [-] pieter_mj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intoverflow2|8 years ago|reply
Have a strong feeling there is going to be a cultural black hole where large segments of music etc lost in the post-naptster/post-piratebay world because it only existed on the artists machine, Spotify's servers and YouTube's servers.
(I understand pirate bay is still kicking but its all certainly way more niche that it was 5-10 years ago)
[+] [-] Bakary|8 years ago|reply
I'm fully aware that Spotify and its competitors are deals with the Devil but if they allow me to feel less burdened, the price is worth it.
It's deeply hypocritical but I also secretly hope that at least a few people stick to archiving and curating just in case.
[+] [-] thirdsun|8 years ago|reply
There are already and always have been large gaps in the streaming catalogs but those are mostly releases that have never been there in the first place. I guess it will be different when John Doe sees his Spotify library shrinking and realizes that he was just renting all this music.
[+] [-] lightedman|8 years ago|reply
That has already happened several times. Anyone remember silent films? Most of the scores were never archived, so most of the original music that went to those films is lost to history.
[+] [-] r3bl|8 years ago|reply
Discover Weekly is highly helpful, and the Release Radar is basically functioning like my music RSS feed. I also use Spotify's save option as basically bookmarks on which albums to download.
Therefore, Spotify is still more than relevant to me, even though I'm keeping local copies of music. I can't really discover new stuff in my own library.
[+] [-] KozmoNau7|8 years ago|reply
As for music disappearing, I have only ever seen that on my ISP's own streaming service, I've never actually seen it happen on Spotify.
[+] [-] ctdonath|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rospaya|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaphorm|8 years ago|reply
Until then I'm ok with streaming.
[+] [-] nicky0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|8 years ago|reply
Nope; you can scratch "phone calls" from that list.
AAC (specifically, the AAC-LD variant) is not the best for low bitrate calls; you want a dedicated voice codec for that application.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAC-LD
AAC-LD is only geared toward voice in one parameter: frame size. It's basically just a "look, AAC can do this too if you want" feature.
Look at the remark there: "It can use a bit rate of 32 - 64kbit/s or higher". That's a whopping lot. 32 kbps is about the far-out upper bound on bit rate for using a voice codec. You can get very good call quality at half that.
http://opus-codec.org/comparison/
Basically if you look at all the options for compressing speech in telephony, AAC doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
[+] [-] phkahler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkielhofner|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mavhc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batushka|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplst8|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevensor|8 years ago|reply
At any rate, (pun intended), I'm perfectly happy with my vorbis files and not in any hurry to convert to MP3. But I'm glad I don't have to worry about the silly patent any longer.
[+] [-] beedogs|8 years ago|reply
Clearly there's absolutely no effort involved in being a journalist anymore.
[+] [-] nebabyte|8 years ago|reply
You skipped a chapter on the history of the web. Formerly "reputable" outlets have transitioned to rubberstamping their brand on any blogger they think can help them preserve their business model, so while they might admittedly still be frontrunners in name recognition and still have credibility in narrower contexts, they have all but morphed into full-time clickbait farms.
[+] [-] elementalest|8 years ago|reply
If this isn't being done, it seems like something that could potentially be achieved with current tech, if not now, then in the near future.
[+] [-] kalleboo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alsadi|8 years ago|reply
yes, because MP3 is now similar to public domain it does not mean it's dead. only the business of patent trolls behind it is dead.
http://g0alkeeper.blogspot.com/2017/05/mp3.html
[+] [-] pervycreeper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kozak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark-r|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djmobley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lholden|8 years ago|reply
These days, all my music is in a lossless format anyway. Especially now that my phone has enough storage space for it.
Anyhow. I'd say that if anything... The patents expiring way the heck sooner would have been healthy for the format.
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hannob|8 years ago|reply
Opus is supported in all major webbrowsers and natively in modern Android systems. I'd call that widely supported.
[+] [-] ksec|8 years ago|reply
And we haven't had any improvement in Audio compression since then. MP3 - AAC and That is it. All the others are at best AAC similar quality / bitrate.
At 256Kbps, the majority couldn't hear a difference between MP3 and AAC. At 128Kbps it is only slightly better.
We dont have anything like HEVC which is an order of magnitude better then, say MPEG-2 at low bitrate.
[+] [-] LeoNatan25|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] S_A_P|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklajid|8 years ago|reply
If there are some passionate podcast listeners here,
1) do you have recommendations for an alternative to Overcast (ideally cross-platform, Android/Linux required, Windows desirable)?
2) can you recommend HN related (overlapping with the content here) podcasts?
[+] [-] QuicksilverJohn|8 years ago|reply