MP3 was developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. Brandenburg began working on digital music compression as a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in the early 1980s, completed his doctorate in 1989, and later joined the staff of Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen in 1993. He worked alongside James D. Johnston at AT&T-Bell Labs and with a group at Fraunhofer known as "The Original Six".
Why was 'Tom's Diner' by Suzanne Vega used to develop MP3?
Karlheinz Brandenburg used an a cappella recording of "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega as a benchmark because her nearly unaccompanied voice was difficult for the algorithm to compress cleanly. Early versions made her voice sound unnatural, so Brandenburg listened to the track repeatedly through each refinement of the compression algorithm. He dubbed Vega the "Mother of MP3".
When was the first MP3 encoder released to the public?
The Fraunhofer Society released the first software MP3 encoder, called l3enc, on the 7th of July 1994. The .mp3 filename extension was chosen on the 14th of July 1995; files had previously been named .bit. The first real-time software MP3 player, WinPlay3, was released on the 9th of September 1995.
How much does MP3 compression reduce file size compared to CD audio?
MP3 compression can commonly achieve a 75-95% reduction in file size compared to CD-quality digital audio, depending on the bit rate used. At 128 kbit/s the compression ratio against uncompressed CD audio is approximately 11:1. Uncompressed CD audio has a data rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s.
When did MP3 patents expire in the United States?
MP3 patents expired in the United States on dates ranging from 2007 to 2017. The longest-running patent, held by Technicolor (formerly Thomson Consumer Electronics), expired on the 16th of April 2017. In the European Union, all relevant MP3 patents had expired by 2012 at the latest.
What was Napster and how did it relate to MP3?
Napster was the first large peer-to-peer file sharing network and was launched in 1999. It enabled widespread sharing of music ripped from CDs and stored as MP3 files. Major record companies sued Napster for facilitating copyright infringement; it was eventually shut down, later sold, and subsequently returned as a paid music streaming service.