While MP3 has been the most widely used digital audio format on PC's and portable players for many years, its usage is actually on the decline according to research at NDP Group's MusicWatch Digital. They have determined that in the last year, the percentage of music stored in the MP3 format on consumer's PC's has dropped 6% to 72% by surveying the hard drives of 40,000 different people .
The reason for the MP3 decline does not mean that users are downloading less MP3's, but is due to the way consumers treat MP3 versus other audio formats. Most consumers download MP3's or rip audio from CD to MP3's as a disposable format to use on portable music players or to sample music off the Internet. However, when consumers purchase music from legal sources such as iTunes, they keep the music permanently stored.
Another reason for the MP3 decline is that many consumers are now using Windows Media player and other software players and jukeboxes to rip their CDs in belief that the music is stored in the MP3 format. As a result, the total estimated number of MP3's in the US dropped 742 million between August 2003 and July 2004 while the number of WMA's have risen 537 million over the same period.
Then again, MP3 still makes up 88% of all music exchanged over P2P according to two major ISP's while WMA makes up just 5%. According to NPD MusicWatch Digital, music stored on hard drives consists of 72% MP3, 19.6% WMA (inc. DRM), 4.3% iTunes (inc. DRM) and 3.9% in other audio formats. When choosing portable players, their study found that 20% of people said MP3 support was important to them compared with 7% for WMA support. Near 0% said AAC support was important despite the iPod and iTunes (both using AAC) being the market leaders. GristyMcFisty submitted the following news via our news submit :
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MP3 is still the overwhelming favorite of file traders, but the once-universal format's popularity has been going quietly but steadily down in personal music collections for the last year. According to researchers at The NPD Group's MusicWatch Digital who track the contents of people's hard drives, the percentage of MP3-formatted songs in digital-music collections has slid steadily in recent months, down to about 72 percent of people's collections from about 82 percent a year ago. "People are still getting MP3s and putting them on hard drives but are deleting them at a rate faster than they're acquiring them," said Isaac Josephson, a researcher at NPD MusicWatch Digital. "People tend to think that downloads are more disposable than rips (copies from a CD), and currently, the lion's share (of MP3s) are downloads." The slow shift in MP3's role is part of an ongoing change in the digital-music industry, with the focus moving slowly away from the anarchic file-swapping networks and toward money-making stores and services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store. Indeed, the big winners over the past year have been the two formats backed by Microsoft and Apple, each of which has gained about 5 percent "hard-drive share" in the past year, according to the ongoing study by NPD MusicWatch Digital. The project surveys the hard-drive contents of 40,000 different people to track Internet and software trends. Researchers say the data does not show that MP3 is losing much of its popularity--files encoded in the format are just more disposable than rivals. People are still downloading boatloads of MP3 files--but they are discarding them at an even faster rate, the researchers said.
Read the full article here. |
It is interesting to see MP3 finally on the decline, but then again as consumers are much more likely to permanently keep purchased downloaded tracks as apposed to downloaded tracks, it is not really surprising to see the gradual change of ratio. However, it is unlikely that any other format will completely overtake MP3 anytime soon.
WMA looked very promising from version 7 boasting better than MP3 quality at half the bit rate of 128kbps MP3. Then came version 8 boasting a similar story but at a third the bit rate of MP3. However, in a recent audio listening test, even with WMA version 9, a properly tuned MP3 encoder can still beat WMA both at an average of 128kbps using variable bit rate compression. On the other hand, encoding to WMA 9 is just a matter as using Windows Media Player (9 or 10) which comes with Windows unlike LAME 3.96 which is trickier to use and get hold of, particularly with novice users.
One main reason I see WMA on the rise on consumers hard drives apart from downloading is that many consumers new to ripping music often use Windows Media Player. By default (at least in version 9), this program encodes music into WMA using DRM. As a result, the user may not see any reason to get a tool to rip CDs to MP3, at least as long as if they get a portable digital player that it supports WMA DRM. Should the user then start using P2P and end up making its collection available online, while this adds WMA tracks to the P2P network, these are of no use to anyone else since they are protected with DRM. This is likely the reason why P2P users still resort to MP3 and likely other unprotected formats on file sharing networks.
Source: CNET News - Music
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MP3 is holding ground. With the penetration of DVDR drives, users can now backup their entire MP3 collections onto a single / few DVDR & use the HD space for larger things, like P2P downloaded movies
As a human I can't diffrentiate sound higher than 22Khz (unless I become a mutt). So any format offering >22KHz is useless. Il will still use MP3 in years to come...
Alot of people are also now changing and using lossless formats for their music when they rip it because drives are getting so cheap and they figure use the best quality available if they're going to the effort of ripping all their music.
I personally am sticking to mp3 and love it, long live the mp3, DRMless and sounding great to these dinky ears of mine on my cheap(ish) (£50) set of speakers. I'm not doing some audio listening test, I just like music and mp3 works great
I was telling Sherrif that's up to him to prefer a juice 'made from fruit concentrate containing at least 8% of the real fruit" to a fresh squeezed juice, if he has the choice.
But he should not criticize the guy that prefers the real juice, even if he takes the dog with him.
In fact, probably you will not listen to the >22KHZ frequencies and Digital Audio CD is limited just to frequencies between 20 and 20KHZ...from there and taking out almost 80% you get MP3.
The problem is that the higher frequencies are not just to call the dog, just ask your doctor and he will talk about a liquid that has micro bones in suspension, and about that some sounds that you can not ear but prepare this system for the change of frequencies and so on... You ask to a musician and maybe he will talk about transients, accords and other stuff that have an impact on the things you listen...even if only the dog can ear them.
Ok, you listen to music using the computer, Ipod, or other device and it sounds great to you. It will sound good to me too, for sure. But feed the same stuff to a good system and you will see/listen the difference.
Vinil 'died" for marketing reasons not for quality ones. CD was promising you heaven, even if it was not true.
Now they sell you MP3 of the Microsoft similar and promised you CD quality, that it is not there.
They try to dematerialize music, sell you files and use DRM to control the use you can make of it...they don't care about quality, but business figures.
Don't be mislead, music files are a product, just a product with pros and cons, but when it comes to music you should not give up the exigency for quality, otherwise you will end up paying the same high price just for second tier goods.
Im pretty happy with it.. If you use LAME 3.96 and the r3mix encoding instructions, you will get a pretty clean MP3 with a good VBR and a filesize..
[edited by Hypnosis4U2NV on 18.10.2004 20:07]
CDs are not limited to >20 Hz. I can play back 0.5 Hz just fine all day. The human ear can't *hear* 0.5, but the fact that my subs move at 1 cycle per 2 seconds shows the playback capability is there. Plus, with a good 15" sub, you'll swear that you can hear 15 Hz!
Recent Lame builds the past year or so are great upto approx 18-20Khz - you choose the setting. To say with mp3 anything above 15Khz is gone is ignorant - you talk bullshit and make yourself look a fool.
If I'd have to change from MP3 to other format, I'd choose MPC. But that's not the case, MP3 is OK for me. I don't have Home Theater or very expensive speakers, I don't have extremely good hearing abilities, so I'll just stick with MP3. Besides, I don't feel like re-compressing my entire MP3 collection :D
