Iconic MP3 format has officially been abandoned

Music’s first premier audio format has finally been abandoned as developers to the much-loved music MP3 officially announced its demise.

The Fraunhofer Institute, a German company that was one of the main driving forces behind the development of the MP3, released a statement stating that the licensing for patents and software relating to the MP3 have been terminated.

Around since the 1980’s, MP3 was behind a revolution in terms of how people initially listened to music. It won’t be making a big difference to how we listen to music now as we have outgrown the MP3 era, but still, its history is bound to make you nostalgic.



The iPod's tagline ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ was a testament to the impact of the MP3 format. With iPod's release, the music industry hit a boom with the MP3 format at the forefront.  The fact that the MP3 format existed up until now in an era of sheer Internet dominance, is nothing short of remarkable.

Recently, however, the MP3 was overtaken by another format -- the Advanced Audio Codec family commonly referred to as AAC.

In an official statement from the Fraunhofer Institute, the spokesperson said, “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”. Unlike other defunct music formats such as vinyl, CD and even MiniDisk that have loyal followers around the world, MP3 has had development in its own genre leading many to drive away from the iconic format.



MP3 has certainly left its mark on the hall of fame of the music industry but the chances of people converting back to it certainly seem slim. Shifting back to an MP3 format would negatively affect the quality of a music file compared to the alternatives available and in order to abandon such a downward trend, Fraunhofer Institute's move is certainly justified.

This article originally appeared on TechRadar.