While the recent headlines touting “The MP3 is DEAD!! [1]” have over-sensationalized the real news [2], it got me thinking about my own digital collection again. So I’ll ask you, dear readers, the same thing I asked myself: is it time to move on from MP3?
Sadly, I am not much farther along in my quest to reorganize my music collection than I was when I asked for reader responses in 2015 [3]. Over the last two years I’ve been sporadically re-ripping CDs as 320kbps MP3s but with the “death knell” headlines I finally decided to take a look at other formats, namely AAC/m4a.
I’m no audiophile when it comes to sound. My ancient MP2 files are just now sounding crusty to my ears but AAC has impressed me with smaller file sizes. Support is also more widespread than the last time I peeked out from my MP3 safe zone: all the apps, programs, and even consoles I might use to play digital files now support it. So that’s where I’m at right now, surrounded by my CD collection once again.
How about you? What’s your format of choice? What do you think about the MP3 news or even the future of digital music files? Let us know in the comments.
Comments Disabled To "Community Question: Is it time to move on from MP3?"
#1 Comment By Smeg On May 31, 2017 @ 10:26 am
Disk space is dirt cheap these days, and network speeds aren’t a inhibiting factor either. There’s no great reason not to use lossless whenever possible.
That said, 99% of the time I listen to anything today, it’s streaming. Maintaining a file collection is exhausting.
#2 Comment By Ryan Paquet On May 31, 2017 @ 10:39 am
The mp3 is far from dead. It’s a format that everyone of all ages pretty much is comfortable using. I still listen to CDs and they haven’t died yet – I suspect years from now when mp3s aren’t being issued anymore by companies there will be Mp3 purists who convert them back, and savour those collections…hmmm…could I be one of those people? Maybe. LOL.
#3 Comment By Richard McDonald On May 31, 2017 @ 1:26 pm
Though MP3 is far from dead, I was considering FLAC. I have more than enough disk space and as FLAC is lossless, I could always bulk convert to another format further down the line. As for compatibility, I use Google Play Music, so that will convert anything I have to whatever Google is using at the time.
#4 Comment By Mustin On May 31, 2017 @ 3:42 pm
Whatever works and sounds good!
#5 Comment By rotane On May 31, 2017 @ 6:53 pm
The recent news got it all wrong: MP3 ain’t dead, it just got free. The Fraunhofer Institute can’t issue licence fees any more, because its patents ran out. There’s nothing more to this story than that. Of course, AAC is a more than worthy successor, but only when compared at low bitrates. Still, that’s no reason to re-rip all your CDs, especially if you already have them at 192kbps or higher.
#6 Comment By Smeg On June 1, 2017 @ 10:30 am
192 is not a great threshold 🙁
#7 Comment By Jayson Napolitano On June 2, 2017 @ 4:18 am
Could be the audio systems I use, but I’ve never been able to discern the difference between lossless and compressed. So I imagine MP3 will be around for some time. I would point out that Apple has been considering axing the ability to buy music outright for a couple years now… shifting over to streaming service only, as they’ve seen a decrease (not huge) in the amount of music that’s bought with the rise of Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music. I think when they do decide to stop selling music outright, it’ll be a sad day. Much more sad than issues related to any music format.
#8 Comment By PeeBody On June 8, 2017 @ 2:07 am
ALAC is almost worse than MP3. Absolutely worthless Apple propaganda. I download FLAC over MP3 always and also keep more rare albums in WAV.