The news that appeared in many newspapers is one of those curious, interesting, but not so simple to understand: MP3, the file format that has completely revolutionized the way we listen to music over the past two decades, is considered obsolete today and passed by the creators themselves and have terminated the patent license. The Fraunhofer Institute, the German-based organization that began developing the audio data compression algorithm in the 1980s, closed its licensing program for the MP3 file format, indicating the AAC format as its successor .
AAC, which stands for Advanced Audio Coding, is a more efficient and better audio format in terms of quality, which feels better and should be the audio format of the future together with the FLAC file, which stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec .
READ ALSO: Differences between digital audio formats (MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV etc.)
Although the MP3 format is still the most popular of the audio files, the end of its licensing program represents an important turning point in the history of digital media.
With a bit of history we can remember how, after its launch in 1993, the MP3 format became super popular in 1998 to bring CDs to computer memory and exchange songs via the Internet in an indiscriminate way.
In those years, the Napster program came that brought the world of music to its knees with the introduction of a peer-to-peer file sharing app, making it really easy for everyone to download MP3s for free.
Eventually, Napster had to succumb due to legal problems, but was replaced by many other similar programs and changed the world anyway by making record stores disappear.
To put things in place a little with piracy, Apple thought that with its iPod and its iTunes Store it began to sell MP3s at lower prices than CDs and MP3 players began to spread on the market.
Already in 2003, however, Apple began to use the AAC format, the format that should replace MP3 files in music players, iPods, smartphones and car radios from today (even if streaming is the master in 2017 and the storage of music files on computers is falling).
The AAC format, like the MP3 file, uses lossy compression or audio encoding for digital compression with data loss.
The FLAC format, which is also very popular, is instead a lossless format, with lossless compression.
AAC files can have the extension .m4a, .m4b, .m4p, .m4v, .m4r, .3gp, .mp4, .aac .
The AAC, today, is not even remotely comparable to MP3 in terms of popularity so that for many it can also be a completely unknown format.
What perhaps many don't know is that almost all music streaming sites today use the AAC file format, as it is a more efficient audio codec when compared to MP3.
The main differences between AAC and MP3 are on size and quality.
The AAC is slightly smaller in size than the MP3 file, so if an MP3 file of a song weighs 10 MB, the same song in the AAC file format weighs about 8 MB.
More important is the difference between MP3 and AAC in terms of sound quality and that's why AAC is preferred.
Compared to a more compressed and smaller size of an AAC than the MP3, it does not correspond to a lower quality.
An AAC audio file is better than MP3 in terms of sound quality and is therefore preferred in the future.
The only problem is in compatibility, because if the MP3 is also played with the latest 10 Euro Chinese MP3 player, AAC, which works very well with Apple devices, but may not work with the MP3 player of unknown brand ( Although you should try before saying it doesn't work).
However, it is easy to predict that in a few years AAC will be the reference format for digital music surpassing MP3.
Depending on where you hear digital music, it may therefore already be a good idea today to convert all MP3 files to AAC would therefore lead to a reduction and overall saving of the space occupied by the music on the PC and on portable music players, without any loss quality.
