MP3 as a format is not actually dead

By now, you probably would have heard the news regarding MP3’s death. It’s been circulating the web like wildfire and every news article I’ve come across reads pretty much along the same lines: MP3 is officially dead.

But here’s the thing — that may not necessarily be the case.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS released this statement:

On April 23, 2017, Technicolor’s mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated.

We thank all of our licensees for their great support in making mp3 the defacto audio codec in the world, during the past two decades.

The development of mp3 started in the late 80s at Fraunhofer IIS, based on previous development results at the University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Although there are more efficient audio codecs with advanced features available today, mp3 is still very popular amongst consumers. However, most state-of-the-art media services such as streaming or TV and radio broadcasting use modern ISO-MPEG codecs such as the AAC family or in the future MPEG-H. Those can deliver more features and a higher audio quality at much lower bitrates compared to mp3.

What we understand from this statement is that the licensing for “certain MP3 related patents and software” has been terminated — and that’s about it. It doesn’t mean that your MP3 files will suddenly stop working because the people that invented it decided that they didn’t want to license it out anymore. It also doesn’t mean that MP3 files will suddenly disappear from the internet anytime soon. Given the popularity that this format has garnered over the years, it’s likely that you will continue seeing MP3 files everywhere for years to come.

However, due to the decidedly vague statement, we don’t know exactly what these “certain patents” are, nor do we know what the termination of the licensing will have on the encoding of the MP3 format. Many have speculated that this move is due to the fact that the MP3 patents held by the two parties are expiring soon and that this is a move to cut cost as well as to usher people on to the newer AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format instead of MP3.

In the event that the patents do expire, it could actually lead to a resurgence of the MP3 format because that would signal that the MP3 format is now patent-free, allowing more parties to freely adopt it.

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