H An Mp 3 Player If example essay topic

What is an MP 3 An MP 3 is a recorded high-quality audio (voice and music) file which can be distributed over the Internet, and played on any multimedia computer with the right sound card and speakers. MP 3 is simply a file format that compresses a song into a smaller size so it is easier to move around on the Internet and store. MPEG is the acronym for Moving Picture Experts Group. This group has developed compression systems used for video data. For example, DVD movies, HDTV broadcasts and DSS satellite systems use MPEG compression to fit video and movie data into smaller spaces. The MPEG compression system includes a subsystem to compress sound, called MPEG audio Layer-3.

We know this as MP 3. The music industry distribution medium of audio CD's, or 'packages of audio information' (approximately 10 songs), preserves its dominate high sale price through shortage. The true value of a musical artist is found only in what he (or the distributor) can persuade or force people to pay for the privilege of listening. It does not matter how much of a 'good idea' it is to have such laws to protect the artists. People will listen without paying, because they can. If the musician wants protection from unauthorized listening of his live performances, that he should find some form of self-protection!

By only performing for small groups of people or for audiences that agree to pay for entrance into an auditorium? And that he should stop crying about people listening to him sing in public without pay, and about the police not arresting the illegal listeners? This is exactly the type of situation that is developing with the new breakthrough digital audio format called MP 3 combined with the Internet. The heart of the matter is not morality, but enforceability.

Audio Copyrights and Other Delusions The same is now true of existing audio copyright issues. They are absolutely unenforceable, and will not protect the artists. Only the morality of the public will protect the music industry, and the morality of the public does not hold much promise for existing copyright issues. The difference between the industry losing 'billions' in audio CD sales from the illegal recording of radio songs on Memorex cassette tapes, and the 'billions' it loses in lost sales from the recording of MP 3 files is this.

MP 3 files are easier to copy, distribute, share, and collect. The copies are digitally exact, and the selection is greater to choose from because there are thousands (and soon to be millions) of MP 3 broadcasters on the Internet, instead of the limited selection of songs that are played on the local radio stations. Many believe there is no moral difference between pressing 'Record' on a cassette player, while listening to their favorite radio or cable TV music channel, and hitting the 'Save to Disk' button on any MP 3 file that they run across. The MP 3 Format CD stores songs as digital information. The data on a CD uses an uncompressed, high-resolution format. Specifically here's what happens to create a CD: "h Music is sampled 44,100 times per second "h The samples are 2 bytes (16 bits) long "h Separate samples are taken for both the left and right speakers in a stereo system Therefore a CD stores a huge number of bits for each second of music: 44,100 samples / second 16 bits / sample 2 channels = 1,411,200 bits per second 1.4 million bits per second is 176,000 bytes per second.

If an average song is 3 minutes long, then the average song on a CD consumes about 32 million bytes of space. 32 Mbytes is a lot of space for one song, and it is especially large when you consider the bandwidth most people have available for their Internet connections. Over a 56 k modem it would take something close to 2 hours to download one song. The MP 3 format is a compression system for music. The MP 3 format helps reduce the number of bytes in a song without hurting the quality of the song's sound. The goal of the MP 3 format is to compress a CD-quality song by a factor of 10 to 14 without losing the CD quality of the sound.

With MP 3, a 32 megabyte song on a CD compresses down to 3 megabytes or so. This lets you download a song in minutes rather than hours, and it lets you store hundreds of songs on your computer's hard disk without taking up that much space. If you wanted to, you could download an MP 3 file, expand it back to its original size and then record it on a write-able CD so you could play it in the CD player in your car. All that you are doing is converting back and forth between different formats to make downloading easier.

MP 3 files are not illegal. What is illegal is taking copyrighted music from an artist's CD, encoding it in the MP 3 format to make it smaller and then giving that music away for free on the Internet without the artist's permission. That violates copyright laws and also cheats the artist. Is it possible to compress a song without hurting its quality? We use compression algorithms for images all the time. For example, a GIF file is a compressed image.

So is a JPG file. We create ZIP files to compress text. So we are familiar with compression algorithms for images and words and we know they work. To make a good compression algorithm for sound, a technique called perceptual noise shaping is used.

The 'perceptual' part in the name means that the MP 3 format uses characteristics of the human ear to design the compression algorithm. For example: "h There are certain sounds that the human ear cannot hear "h There are certain sounds that the human ear hears much better than others "h If there are two sounds playing simultaneously we hear the louder one but cannot hear the softer one. Knowing this, certain parts of a song can be eliminated without significantly hurting the quality of the song for the listener. Compressing the rest of the song with well-known compression techniques shrinks the song considerably. When you are done creating an MP 3 file, what you have is 'near CD' quality. The MP 3 version of the song will not sound exactly the same as the original CD because some of the song has been removed, but it will be close.

Downloading and Listening to MP 3 files If you would like to download and then listen to MP 3 files on your computer, then you need: "h A computer "h A sound card and speakers for the computer (if your computer has speakers it has a sound card) "h An Internet connection (if you are browsing the web, then you have an Internet connection and it is working fine) "h An MP 3 player (a software application you can download from the web in 10 minutes) If you have recently purchased a new computer, chances are it already has software that can play MP 3 files installed on its hard disk. The easiest way to find out if you already have an MP 3 player installed is to download an MP 3 file and try to double-click on it. If it plays you are set. If not, you need to download a player which isn! |t very hard to do. Here's three of the biggest sites to download MP 3 files are: "h MP 3. com "h Scour - looks across a number of MP 3 sites for songs and software "h Riff age Go to one of these sites, find a song and download it to your hard disk (most MP 3 sites let you listen to the song as a streaming file or download the song -- you want). Most songs range between 2 and 4 megabytes, so it will take 10 to 15 minutes unless you have a high-speed internet connection.

Once the song has finished downloading, try to double-click on the file and see what happens. If your computer plays it, then you are set. If you find that you cannot play it, then you need to download an MP 3 player. One of the most popular MP 3 players available is Win Amp, which you can download from web Once you download and install a player, double-click on the MP 3 file that you downloaded and it will play. You are now ready to begin collecting MP 3 files and saving them on your computer. Many people have hundreds of songs they have collected, and they create juke-box like playlists so that their computer can play them all day long!

The Future The Future of the Music Industry, despite the rumors and hearsay about MP 3's, they are the future of the music industry. The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) has tried to sue MP 3 hardware and software makers, like Diamond Multimedia, yet have been unsuccessful. The Internet is changing the way that musicians can sell their work. In turn, musicians who support MP 3's are not supportive of computer piracy but have found themselves an effective outlet to advertise themselves. MP 3 is a file format that can store audio files on a computer. They are very small in file size and the songs sound nearly perfect.

All you need to play these files on your computer is an MP 3 player. Anyone with an Internet connection can download an MP 3 player for free off the Internet. There are many different types of players that you can download, they all look different but support the same idea. They look and work like a car stereo for your computer. The average download time of an MP 3 player on a 56 K modem is about one to two hours; the average download time of a song on a 56 K modem is about fifteen to thirty minutes. It sounds like a lot of time to waste but it is free music.

Many of today's college campuses offer a free Internet access to their students. Most of those campuses use an Ethernet connection rather than a 56 K modem. In layman's terms it means that students who are on these Ethernet connections are always connected to the Internet and can download files over 100 times faster than a normal 56 K modem. Therefore, it only takes about five to ten minutes to download a player and about one to four minutes to download a song. It is not very surprising that a huge percentage of MP 3 users are college students, ages 18 to 24. On campuses that offer Ethernet connections up to 75% of students are music pirates.

Also, that is probably the reason that the percentage of music buyers who are between the ages of 15 and 24 years old has decl ined from 32.2% in 1996 to 28% in 1998. The question at hand is ' Are MP 3's legal?' The answer is yes and no. Like many technologies, MP 3 can be implemented for both legal and illegal uses. It is similar to Zip compression, common to most computer users. Zip files may be used to distribute copyrighted materials illegally or for legitimate purposes.

MP 3 users work on the honors system. They can go to a site and download a song that is on the top 20 charts. They are given instructions not to distribute the song and to erase it within 24 to 48 hours. Whether or not they wish to do this is their own choice. On the other hand, some bands allow MP 3 users to keep and distribute their copyrighted material.

This is a fast and effective way to advertise, especially for bands that don! |t get their songs played on the radio every day. MP 3 files are allowing a whole bunch of new musicians to reach a worldwide audience without dealing with record labels. Today, everybody who has an Internet connection can have a web page. Web pages are easy to make and are a great way to advertise.

Bands who have their own web pages can make their own MP 3's and put them on their web page for the public to download for free. Making an MP 3 is about as easy as downloading a player to hear a downloaded song. Anybody who has access to a computer with a CD-ROM drive can do this. All you need to do is download a program called Music Match and install it on your computer. Put in the CD that you would like to make an MP 3 of and click the record button. Then just sit back and wait while the CD track is encoded in the MP 3 format.

This type of technology is great for small bands that need to make a name for themselves. Many people have given MP 3 a bad name because it is often associated with music pirates, but it is the best way for the little guys to get their music out without paying an arm and a leg to do it. Small artists now have a chance to be heard that they did not have before. After seeing how successful the little bands were, The Beastie Boys went out on a limb and became the first known band to use MP 3's. They used MP 3's as an important part on their entire online strategy. They realized that every music pirating MP 3 site had Beastie Boys songs, and some even had bootlegged versions of live shows.

The Beasties knew that they could not put songs that had been copyrighted on their site for free to the public. They came up with an idea to kill two birds with one stone. They released live recordings and remixes to the public for free on their official site. This strategy both counters bootleggers and gave Beastie Boys fans a little something that they could not have gotten anywhere else. The Beasties just ask two things from the down loaders; an email address so that they can be mailed newsletters and the public is asked not to distribute the songs, but to direct people to the Beastie Boys web site.

Since the Beasties huge step, many other known musicians have followed in their footsteps with distributing their music via MP 3 on the Internet. Including musicians Taylor Dayne, Willie Nelson, The Beach Boys, and The Blues Brothers to name a few. These artists are playing the game very smart. They are offering the public their music for free, in turn, people are telling their friends, who check out this band's site and eventually like them. The public gets a sneak peak at what the band has to offer and if people like it, they have the option to purchase merchandise from the bands. Some bands are even rebelling against their own record labels.

A rock group, Less Than Jake and the rap group, Public Enemy, have released MP 3 tracks off their new albums free of charge to the public on their web sites. This has, in turn angered their record companies. The public loves the idea that the artists are supporting them and not the large record labels. MP 3's are already changing the music industry. In fact, Diamond Multimedia is in the process of creating a portable MP 3 player. Robertson says, 'The Rio portable MP 3 player will kick the digital music movement into overdrive'.

It will not happen overnight, but from the research that I have done I strongly feel that in five to ten years MP 3's will be the standard that CD's are today. The public doesn! |t want to pay $15.99 for their music; the typical price for a CD. They would rather buy the portable player and download the songs that they would like off the Internet for free, or for a minimal amount of money. The RIAA has to face the facts that we as a society are moving toward a digital age, and we are moving rapidly. The new portable player will also come with Music Match software that allows the consumer to easily convert their CD collection into MP 3's, therefore eliminating CD's all together. Despite the music industries threatening reactions to MP 3's, MP 3 has gotten impressive support from users and artists alike.

The artists realize that it is a great way to sell themselves to the public. Over 600 artists have signed up with MP 3. com. The RIAA has to understand that the conventional way that music is sold is over. The only way that they will survive is to change with the times. Robertson says that MP 3 will have the impact on the music industry that the copying machine had on the publishing industry.

At first publishers could not control what people were copying, and now look, copier machines are in every office today. The future is coming fast; the only way to be prepared for it is to educate yourself about the new technologies that are on the rise. Ten years ago, nobody thought that with a computer you could talk to somebody across the globe. Look at the advantages that the Internet has given us.

With a click of a mouse you can download a top 20 hit or a golden oldie. I invite music fans alike to try out MP 3 and you will realize that the future is here today with MP 3 technology. How will the industry develop? USB will be a key trend as it is superior to the traditional parallel interface. A USB interface speeds up the download rate by seven to eight times. It also easily fits into the tiny player housing.

All new products now use a USB with interfaces as small as 6 mm by 4 mm. This design makes ultra compact MP 3 players possible. Manufacturers are also developing a built-in rechargeable nickel-hydride battery for MP 3 players, this allows users to recharge the battery using the USB connection. One of the future trends is toward multi-functionality.

In the long term, the MP 3 player will develop into an integrated product with a mobile phone, PDA and so on. Because of the way it's configured, with a CPU and memory, the MP 3 player can take on PDA functions more easily than a PDA can be transformed into a music player. Another trend is larger screens, which may make PDA functions even easier to add to MP 3 players. The radio function has become standard in almost all MP 3 players.

This will solve the problem of limited memory space to some extent, as users will get music from other sources. MP 3 players are rather like computer peripheral equipment as they use MCU- and SCM-related technology. However, the power management design is acoustics-related. R&D for this product will involve both areas.

The Picture for the future New models will emerge, and some manufacturers will plan large-scale promotions to attract more potential users. The largest consumer groups are white-collar consumers with enough interest and money. But products with a good performance / cost ratio have not been brought out for them. They are looking for a combination of MP 3, radio, PDA and a mobile phone, if possible. We think ordinary customers will welcome a multi-functional MP 3 device.

If the price and performance are satisfactory, the market will be very big. In the long term, the MP 3 player will be as popular as the Walkman was, many years ago. All the Mp 3 players released so far are basically first generation, which shows amazing potential for smaller size, increased capacity, and more features. Mp 3 players are already amazingly small. Yet, they are getting smaller even as we speak, Casio has begun to market it's wristwatch Mp 3 player that plays 30 minutes of CD quality music (Casio WMP-1 V). In addition, Mp 3 players are already becoming increasingly versatile, incorporating FM tuners, time scaling playback and microphones for voice recording.

There are already portable Mp 3 players roughly the size of a Discman that can hold up to 100 hours of music. Plus, more and more companies are entering the market with their own line of Mp 3 players that ensure that in the future an increasingly wider variety of products will be available for less and less. Multi-functional players are the way forward in the MP 3 industry In the future MP 3 players will become all-in-one devices, it will include a PDA, music player, radio and mobile phone all in one. Satisfying this demand will be key to the growth of the MP 3 player market, demand is growing for MP 3 players, and there's a clamor for their prices to come down. The majority of current manufacturers are OEM makers without their own brand and key technology.

Bibliography

Greenfield, Karl. 'You! |ve Got Music. ' Time 22 February 1999: 58-60 Philips, Chuck.
Web Impresario Posing Threat to Music Industry. ' (Los Angeles) LA Times 4 December 1998.
web Robertson, Michael. 'Attempts to Shutdown Pirate MP 3 Music Sites are Backfiring. ' No date a vai -- -l able. web -- -. 'Beasties Blast MP 3's and Exploit the Net. 'Rio Rocks Music Industry. 'Top Tier Artists Do MP 3. 'Why Would an Artist Give Away Free Music? To Make Money. ' No date available. web Wolfe, Bill. 'The Basics of MP 3. ' (Louisville) Louisville Courier-Journal. 12 March 1999.