History of the MP3 Format (Matthew Corpolongo)
In 1987, the Fraunhofer Institut started working on a new “high quality, low bit-rate audio coding [7].” With the help of Professor Dieter Seitzer of the University of Erlangen [6], the Moving Picture Experts Group, (MPEG) Audio Layer III, more commonly known as the MP3 was born. The goal of this lossy audio format was to reduce the bandwidth necessary to playback an audio file with an acceptable sound quality. In 1989, the Fraunhofer Institut was awarded a German patent on the MP3, and the format submitted to the International Standards Organization, who later adopted it as the audio format to be included in the MPEG-1 standardization [2] and standardized it as the ISO-MPEG Audio Layer-3 (IS 11172-3 / IS 13818-3) [6]. Not much later, the Fraunhofer Institut wrote a MP3 playback program, but “it turned out to be a pretty underwhelming application [7].”
On October 28, 1992, President Bill Clinton [3] signed the Digital Audio Home Recording Act. The “Digital Audio Home Recording Act required serial copy management systems in digital audio recorders and imposed royalties on sale of digital audio recording devices and media, [1]” and also “clarified legality of home taping of analog and digital sound recordings for private use. [3]” The clarification of the legality of home taping was seen as very important in later years.
The MP3 started to take off, only after more software was written to playback the MP3 files users had. In 1997 Tomislav Uzelac wrote the AMP MP3 playback engine, which according to Christopher Jones of Lycos, was “… regarded as the first prime-time MP3 player. [7]” Shortly after the AMP MP3 playback engine was release, a college student from Sedona, Arizona [5], Justin Frankel, built a Windows ò GUI application using the AMP MP3 playback engine as the backend. WinAMP ò was born, and the MP3 revolution took off. Frankel offered the early versions of the software for free, later for a small fee in a shareware model, and later back to a free model. [11]
At this time, the MP3 format was free from royalties. This spurred a surge of free programs to play MP3s, rip MP3s from audio CDs, and programs to edit ID3 tags (which store information in the MP3 regarding title, genre, group, year, etc.).
This was also the time that the first portable MP3 players hit the market. These players allowed users to record MP3s from their computer onto a portable device, and hit the road with their tunes. Diamond, Inc. was the first to release such a product. Their Rio ò player, released in 1998 [3] caused a major stir in the recording industry, and was soon brought to court. The RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, brought Diamond to court, saying that the device violates the Home Recording Act of 1992, by digitally copying music to the player. The court sided with Diamond, saying that device does not violate the Home Recording Act, because the “player made copies from computer hard drives, not digital music recordings [3].”
In May of 1999, Shawn Fanning, a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston [4], wrote the now infamous program Napster, which took the world by surprise. Until this point, the MP3 format was not well known. Trading of MP3s was an underground thing, comprised mostly of ftp sites and IRC channels. Fanning’s software allowed the easy transfer of MP3s between people, requiring only a net connection and his free software. Sharing of MP3s boomed, and nearly overnight the whole world knew of this 19 year old and his software. The RIAA was quick to respond, taking Napster to court in November of 1999 [9], saying that they were involved in the illegal trade of copyrighted material. Napster fought back, claiming that they only provided an indexing service, and they were not responsible for the activities of their users [8].
Napster was only the first of an uncountable number of similar programs. Nullsoft, the makers of WinAMP, created their own ‘Napster Clone’ when they wrote Gnutella. Gnutella used a distributed system of searching, as opposed to the centralized system in use by Napster. The executable file for Gnutella was on the Internet for roughly one day, when it was removed by America Online Inc. who recently purchased Nullsoft [10]. Gnutella was quickly reverse engineered, expanded upon, and distributed on the Internet. Gnutella was the first software of its kind to use a distributed connection/search system. It paved the way for even more advanced programs that used this system.
The trading of MP3s still exists to this day. The legality of MP3 trading is still under fire. Many companies have created new audio formats with built-in security measures, to try and curb the trading of illegal MP3s on the Internet. The only problem is that these formats offer no reason for the public to switch. Also, many of these formats were cracked shortly after release. With the wide acceptance of the MP3 format and tools for creating and listening to MP3s, it seems that the format is here to stay. And while Napster is gone, countless other similar programs have popped up, and continue to pop up. With each incarnation of such programs, they become smarter, and harder to stop.
1) “Copyright for the Artist – History”, acadiana.com/copyright/history.html
2) “Kosmoi: Behind the Files: History of MP3”, /Technology/Computer/Software/MP3/
3) “Napster’s History Timeline”, sonal.psu.edu/users/j/i/jid102/timeline.html
4) “Shawn Fanning”, sonal.psu.edu/users/j/i/jid102/timeline.html
5) “WINAMP.COM | Who We Are”, amp.com/team/
6) “Fraunhofer IIS-A – AMM – Layer – 3 Info”, .fraunhofer.de/amm/techinf/layer3/
7) Jones, Christopher. “MP3 Overview”, os.com/webmonkey/00/31/index3a.html?tw=multimedia
8) “Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California”, a.org/pdf/napsterdecision.pdf
9) Reece, Doug. “Napster Caught Snoozing: RIAA to Slap Company With Lawsuit”, 3.com/news/436.html
10) “Open Source Napster: Gnutella”, /article.pl?sid=00/03/14/0949234&mode=thread
11) Nullsoft, “Whatsnew.txt”, Included with installer for Winamp.