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Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? As an end user I can't discern any difference between the two in terms of filesi

by jiggy2011 14y ago

Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? As an end user I can't discern any difference between the two in terms of filesize or sound quality.

dgallagher 14y ago
The most popular portable media players in the 2000's didn't support OGG. No iPod, Creative Labs MP3 players, iTunes, Windows Media Player, portable CD player w/MP3 support, car stereo's, etc... Around the mid-2000's, iRiver sold an OGG player, though it was $300 alongside a $300 iPod. Their interface wasn't as good, and it was clunky to use (I bought and returned one). It fell through the cracks like a zillion other iPod competitors. Also recall DRM was a big part of digital music for a while. iTunes was dominant, and made ACC popular. I'm not even sure you can add DRM to OGG, outside of wrapping the file or watermarking. Watermarking works, but wrapping an OGG file doesn't make it OGG anymore. So in a nutshell, OGG failed to catch on because there wasn't enough hardware or software support. On top of that, few people knew what OGG was, and didn't demand it from companies. Content owners had no reason to support it as they were focused on DRM. Apple dominated the market and standardized on MP3/ACC.
hackernewbie 14y ago
I'll say it. It might sound incredibly trivial, but the name. It's an insanely intimidating name.
- shardling 14y ago
  I don't see how ogg is worse than mp3. And if you're considering Ogg Vorbis, lets remember that the "full" name of mp3 would be something like Moving Picture Experts Group 2 Audio Layer III. People just call them by their file extensions.
  - hackernewbie 14y ago
    But they didn't. Noone ever just called it ogg. It was always Ogg Vorbis, sometimes Ogg/Vorbis. Some file types just get an easy ride, like jpeg/jpg. Imagine if it was actually routinely referred to as a Joint Expert file. Maybe pngs would have taken off faster (they are still less frequently searched than gif or jpg according to gtrends).
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
ajross 14y ago
The MP3 patents have at this point largely expired, so there's comparatively little real cost in implementing them for commercial products. And actually, to the extent that the difference can be measured, Vorbis is generally considered to be a better codec. But content rules. I have 8G of mostly-mp3 music in my Google Music account simply because that's how I got it. Players out there play mp3 because that's what is out there. Of the successful consumer platforms out there, only Android includes ogg support out of the box, and that mostly due to the whims of its developers than any real market pressure. It's exactly that point that Stallman was talking about in 2001 -- despite having very good software available, we're now into our second decade of "free software products cannot play music by default". Maybe we should have listened to him more carefully...
- Semaphor 14y ago
  Sansa clip (a successful player for those of us who want really small devices to play music on the go, before it I still had a usb-stick/mp3 player combo) had ogg out of the box.
davidw 14y ago
> Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? "Network effects": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
_delirium 14y ago
For some applications Ogg did take over. Music in videogames is often Ogg-encoded due to potential legal problems with including mp3 support. For end users I'm actually not sure either MP3 or Ogg are dominant anymore. I would guess the iTunes Store's choice of AAC has pushed that format significantly.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Not to mention Spotify uses ogg. But it is not user-visible.
tzs 14y ago
One problem that slowed Ogg Vorbis early on was MP3 had integer only or fixed point decoders first, allowing music player manufacturers to do software decoding with CPUs that did not have floating point hardware. It wasn't until around 2002 that good integer only or fixed point Ogg Vorbis decoders became available.
ValentineC 14y ago
I followed MP3 and Vorbis development in its early days. From my perspective as an end user myself, I thought that MP3 encoders (LAME, especially) improved by leaps and bounds in the transparency front, while Vorbis remained largely as a low-bitrate (128kbps~) alternative. Plus, I could play MP3 on virtually any device. Vorbis support depended on iRiver releasing new firmware, or hacking an iPod to support Rockbox. The Hydrogenaudio forums [1] are a great place to see how the formats progressed, if you're willing to dig through the archives. [1] http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=idx http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=idx

Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? As an end user I can't discern any difference between the two in terms of filesize or sound quality.

dgallagher 14y ago

The most popular portable media players in the 2000's didn't support OGG. No iPod, Creative Labs MP3 players, iTunes, Windows Media Player, portable CD player w/MP3 support, car stereo's, etc... Around the mid-2000's, iRiver sold an OGG player, though it was $300 alongside a $300 iPod. Their interface wasn't as good, and it was clunky to use (I bought and returned one). It fell through the cracks like a zillion other iPod competitors. Also recall DRM was a big part of digital music for a while. iTunes was dominant, and made ACC popular. I'm not even sure you can add DRM to OGG, outside of wrapping the file or watermarking. Watermarking works, but wrapping an OGG file doesn't make it OGG anymore. So in a nutshell, OGG failed to catch on because there wasn't enough hardware or software support. On top of that, few people knew what OGG was, and didn't demand it from companies. Content owners had no reason to support it as they were focused on DRM. Apple dominated the market and standardized on MP3/ACC.

hackernewbie 14y ago

I'll say it. It might sound incredibly trivial, but the name. It's an insanely intimidating name.

shardling 14y ago
I don't see how ogg is worse than mp3. And if you're considering Ogg Vorbis, lets remember that the "full" name of mp3 would be something like Moving Picture Experts Group 2 Audio Layer III. People just call them by their file extensions.
- hackernewbie 14y ago
  But they didn't. Noone ever just called it ogg. It was always Ogg Vorbis, sometimes Ogg/Vorbis. Some file types just get an easy ride, like jpeg/jpg. Imagine if it was actually routinely referred to as a Joint Expert file. Maybe pngs would have taken off faster (they are still less frequently searched than gif or jpg according to gtrends).
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

ajross 14y ago

The MP3 patents have at this point largely expired, so there's comparatively little real cost in implementing them for commercial products. And actually, to the extent that the difference can be measured, Vorbis is generally considered to be a better codec. But content rules. I have 8G of mostly-mp3 music in my Google Music account simply because that's how I got it. Players out there play mp3 because that's what is out there. Of the successful consumer platforms out there, only Android includes ogg support out of the box, and that mostly due to the whims of its developers than any real market pressure. It's exactly that point that Stallman was talking about in 2001 -- despite having very good software available, we're now into our second decade of "free software products cannot play music by default". Maybe we should have listened to him more carefully...

Semaphor 14y ago
Sansa clip (a successful player for those of us who want really small devices to play music on the go, before it I still had a usb-stick/mp3 player combo) had ogg out of the box.

davidw 14y ago

> Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? "Network effects": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

_delirium 14y ago

For some applications Ogg did take over. Music in videogames is often Ogg-encoded due to potential legal problems with including mp3 support. For end users I'm actually not sure either MP3 or Ogg are dominant anymore. I would guess the iTunes Store's choice of AAC has pushed that format significantly.

justincormack 14y ago
Not to mention Spotify uses ogg. But it is not user-visible.

tzs 14y ago

One problem that slowed Ogg Vorbis early on was MP3 had integer only or fixed point decoders first, allowing music player manufacturers to do software decoding with CPUs that did not have floating point hardware. It wasn't until around 2002 that good integer only or fixed point Ogg Vorbis decoders became available.

ValentineC 14y ago

I followed MP3 and Vorbis development in its early days. From my perspective as an end user myself, I thought that MP3 encoders (LAME, especially) improved by leaps and bounds in the transparency front, while Vorbis remained largely as a low-bitrate (128kbps~) alternative. Plus, I could play MP3 on virtually any device. Vorbis support depended on iRiver releasing new firmware, or hacking an iPod to support Rockbox. The Hydrogenaudio forums [1] are a great place to see how the formats progressed, if you're willing to dig through the archives. [1] http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=idx http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=idx