The music today is streamed in many different formats and each one has its particular feature. The most popular of all is MP3 but its time is over Fraunhofer Institute, which in fact licensed the MP3 encoder and decoder, reported that it had stopped supporting this music format. By the way, AAC was named as the successor.
In April 2017, the patent terms of this audio file compression technology expired. And the creators themselves announced on the official website the “death” of MP3. Although MP3 is still hugely popular among music enthusiasts, there are more advanced audio codecs now. For example, the media and music streaming services use ISO-MPEG codecs, like AAC or in the future MPEG-H. Compared to MP3, they provide more capabilities and better audio quality at lower bitrates.
Nevertheless, the question of MP3 “death” isn’t that obvious. Many people see this incident as a new start for MP3 because it can become even more popular. Without any licensing, it will be easier to create MP3. However, others believe that it really is the beginning of an end. Of course, MP3 will still be present for many years but it will gradually disappear and new formats will take its place.
