Fraunhofer ends MP3 license program

Fraunhofer and Technicolor have discontinued the MP3 licensing program after patents for the audio technology expired. Mp3 is now free and free to use. According to research institute Fraunhofer, there are now better alternatives, such as aac.

Technicolor ended its MP3 licensing program on April 23, Fraunhofer reports. Technicolor managed the licensing program for Fraunhofer, the inventor of audio technology. MP3 patents expired in most countries at the end of 2012, many US patents for decoding MP3 followed in 2015 and the last one, patent 6,009,399, expired on April 16, 2017 in the US.

This means that from now on MP3 can be used freely and free of charge by, for example, software manufacturers. Fraunhofer earned more than a hundred million euros from the licensing program, which did not apply to end users.

The history of MP3 begins with the German Karlheinz Brandenburg, who in the early 1980s, as a student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, analyzed how people perceive music. With the results of this, he started developing a digital audio format. While working at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, he finalized the details of audio compression. The MP3 format has been around since 1992, but was not given its current name and extension until July 14, 1995.

According to Fraunhofer, there are now formats that offer more functionality and better audio quality at lower bit rates. In addition, streaming audio and video providers use modern iso-mpeg codecs, such as aac and mpeg-h. However, mp3 is still very popular.