In April 1999, the abbreviation “MP3” topped the Internet’s most-searched-for lists for the first time. Since then, MP3 has made triumphant progress and conquered many media. But what is actually behind all the fuss about MP3?

Beyond all the “hysteria”, MP3 is, always was, and always will be a file format, comparable with other well-known formats, such as TXT for text documents. The MP3 format was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for storage of audio data. MP3 is an abbreviation for a compression algorithm called “MPEG 1 Layer-3”. And precisely this compression of data was the basis for the MP3 revolution. Taking human acoustic perception into account, the MP3 algorithm allows data to be compressed by a factor of 10-14 times with almost no loss of quality. In some cases, 80 minutes of music, that formally took up around 700 MB on a conventional CD, can be compressed to under 70 MB. All of a sudden, a three-minute track takes up less than 3MB of memory.

This unique MP3 compression had far-reaching consequences. On the one hand, entire CD collections could be stored on a single hard drive. At the same time, music became even more mobile. Whether on the Internet, via a portable MP3 player, and now even in your car, MP3 is the format of the future!

Find out how to obtain MP3 files on the “Technology” page!