Music File Formats, Short Term, Long Term
According to this story, lots and lots of companies that license MP3 technology -- including Apple and Sony -- could end up having, shall we say, interesting times ahead.
MP3 is firmly entrenched right now as the audio format of choice for computers and media players. But that's not likely to continue forever. Other formats are gaining prominence -- some for better compression, some for little or no compression, some for better audio replication, some for being open-source.
I asked about this a few years ago, and got some fascinating and helpful info. But time and technology have marched on, and I haven't researched things nearly enough lately, but I think it's time to do so.
What audio file format(s) do you prefer? (The likeliest candidates are MP3, MP4, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack, and lossless WMA.) What features of those formats do you find more important -- audio quality, file size, compression ratio, DRM or lack thereof, what? And, if I made songs available in multiple formats -- not a trouble, I've got lots of server space and the conversion is just an additional step, two mouse clicks, and five minutes' processing -- which would you like to be able to buy?
MP3 is firmly entrenched right now as the audio format of choice for computers and media players. But that's not likely to continue forever. Other formats are gaining prominence -- some for better compression, some for little or no compression, some for better audio replication, some for being open-source.
I asked about this a few years ago, and got some fascinating and helpful info. But time and technology have marched on, and I haven't researched things nearly enough lately, but I think it's time to do so.
What audio file format(s) do you prefer? (The likeliest candidates are MP3, MP4, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack, and lossless WMA.) What features of those formats do you find more important -- audio quality, file size, compression ratio, DRM or lack thereof, what? And, if I made songs available in multiple formats -- not a trouble, I've got lots of server space and the conversion is just an additional step, two mouse clicks, and five minutes' processing -- which would you like to be able to buy?