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July 14, 1995: The MP3 file format receives its official name
#1
https://www.cultofmac.com/492546/tiah-mp3-format-named/

July 14, 1995: The MP3 file format receives its official name as the new .bit file extension gets changed to .mp3. The technology allows compression of a standard CD .wav file to one-tenth its original size, courtesy of some smart algorithms.

The format will revolutionize the music industry — and put Apple on the road to world-conquering dominance.

The MP3 enables easy sharing of music tracks online and makes music more portable than ever. Apple’s iPod will become the world’s best-known MP3 player, quickly capitalizing on the new format.

The MP3 gave people the ability to, as Apple would later phrase it, “put a thousand songs in your pocket.”

MP3 represented a significant advance — and it all came down to file sizes. While it might not sound like much in today’s world of broadband connectivity, reducing song file sizes from 32MB to 3MB proved massive in the mid-1990s.
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#2
The ability to carry a CD/record collection in one's pocket was definitely a turning point for the music industry.

Napster (the original) suddenly became a thing, too …
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#3
bfd wrote:
The ability to carry a CD/record collection in one's pocket was definitely a turning point for the music industry.

Napster (the original) suddenly became a thing, too …

Pandora's Box for sure.
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#4
I remember a guy I went to college with put a laptop motherboard on a piece of plywood, with a hard drive attached with a few thousand MP3 files on it. He'd essentially invented a primitive MP3 player. It was technically 'portable' but it was still about the size of a large text book. Nonetheless, at the time, the ability to carry thousands of songs around with you was such a foreign concept....he used to bring it down to the computer lab and connect it to a Goodwill stereo we'd installed, then we'd spent the night coding while listing to the entire Iron Maiden or Metallica catalog.
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#5
We owned a Pioneer 6pack CD player, I wrote my PhD dissertation to it...

https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/...s/CDX-P656

We even purchased one of these massive carrousel players:

https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-PD-F1009-...B00004RDL5

Then started converting to mp3s to play entire playlists on single mp3 optical discs.

Going mp3 meant we could put our music in our car, throughout the house etc.

We did not buy an iPod until 3rd gen.
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#6
sekker wrote:
We even purchased one of these massive carrousel players:

I traded my 5 disc carousel for a cheap futon...
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#7
one of the most confusing things about the format's name(s):

MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Going_public
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