<nettime> Why artists should be using Ogg Vorbis (instead of mp3)

[Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>]

Excerpt from an article by Daniel James,
<http://mondodesigno.com/music/ogg.html>:

[...]


What's wrong with MP3?

So why not just use MP3? It's popular already, and listeners can
easily share it. The problem is that the people who created MP3
compression want to get in on the content industry act, and have
positioned themselves as another middleman. Free encoders for the MP3
format have already bitten the dust, as the owners of the technology
demand royalties for making software that uses it.

Although originally touted as a free format, and associated with
no-cost music downloads, the technology behind MP3 was always
proprietary. In classic 'free lunch' marketing, a product was given
away free until it became popular, at which time the owners
transformed it into a commercial product.

As an artist, the royalties on MP3 mean that you'll have to pay a
flat fee on every single track of your own music that's downloaded.
It might only be a few cents at the moment, but the people who control
the technology will be able to charge you whatever they like in
future. And this will mean you won't be able to give away free tracks
even if you want to - unless you pay the MP3 royalty yourself.

Ogg Vorbis is a direct replacement for MP3, without the technology
tax - it's completely royalty free, and will stay that way thanks to
its free software licence. Ogg files are already supported by a
number of software players such as Winamp, and the encoders are freely
available. With its variable bitrate technology, your music in
Ogg format should sound even better than MP3 at the same file size.

The Ogg Vorbis format is outside of the control of the content
industry. They can use it, but they can't stop you from using it. And
if you want to let people listen to music which you own the
copyright of without restrictions, or share it with their friends, you
can.

But the Ogg format won't take off unless artists make the files
available. So if you want to support freedom in music, download the
free encoder from www.vorbis.com and put some .ogg tracks on
your web site.


Please send comments on this article to daniel@mondodesigno.com
-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA 

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net