The actual patent owner of MP3 has finally pressed the stop button. The licensing for the said audio codec been officially stopped.

The most popular audio format has bid farewell to its millions of consumer. Fraunhofer Institute, which claimed the right to license certain MP3 patents to software developers, has ended its licensing program. In a statement released, the institute cited new audio codecs as one of the reasons behind such action.

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"Although there are more efficient audio codecs with advanced features available today, mp3 is still very popular amongst consumers. However, most state-of-the-art media services such as streaming or TV and radio broadcasting use modern ISO-MPEG codecs such as the AAC family or in the future MPEG-H. Those can deliver more features and a higher audio quality at much lower bitrates compared to mp3," Gizmodo quoted Fraunhofer's statement as saying.

In a sense, consumers took a slight participation at the end of MP3 audio format through their mobile phones. Apart from MP3's inferior audio quality, the rise of smartphone ushered new options for consumers. Mobile devices utilize more efficient audio formats for user entertainment. 

However, although the said audio codec may have ended in this era, its remnants will almost be perpetual. There would still be vast collections of digital albums under such format that could be easily downloaded, shared, enjoyed by consumers.

In retrospect, the development of such audio format begun in the late 80s at Fraunhofer IIS. It was seen as an audio coding format for digital audio that utilizes a form of "lossy data compression." And with its appearance in the music industry, people suddenly experienced a less restricted way of sharing music and entertainment worldwide.

However, consumers should not fret with the departure of MP3 from the digital scene. There are many other options that are far better than of the said format that you can freely use and share online.

Watch her below audio format discussion: