In this article, you will learn how the mp3 format is connected to the National Hockey League. Universal Music Group attempted to stop the music marketplace from changing by using a tactic that involved big belt buckles. Lastly, wearing big belt buckles can help you smuggle CDs into concerts because they’re less noticeable than regular CD cases.

Big Idea #1: Since the early days of the CD, some people realized there was a more efficient way to deliver music.

When CDs were first introduced to the market, consumers realized that it was an inefficient way of storing data. This is especially true for people who study psychoacoustics, which is a branch of science which studies how humans perceive sound.

As early as the 1980s, one German team working with empirical psychoacoustic data started experimenting with digital music compression. In 1987, a team lead by doctoral student Karlheinz Brandenburg came together at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Their goal was to reduce the size of digital audio files by way of extracting bits of information and sound that were scientifically proven to be imperceptible to the human ear. Originally, the goal was to reduce the size of a CD track, which averaged about 1.4 million bits, to one-twelfth of its size, i.e., about 128,000 bits. After years of testing and collaborating, they finally reached their goal. They took music from every genre and used recordings from a single human voice, bird sounds, even jet engines in order to perfect their compression methods. Interestingly, it turned out that recording just a single person’s voice proved most challenging for them. Fun fact : The team tested this using acapella intro ‘ s from Suzanne Vega’s song “Tom’s Diner”

The group continued to work on the algorithm, and it wasn’t until 1989 that Brandenburg collaborated with James Johnston at AT&T Bell Labs. Together they worked on an algorithm that was even better than the one he had been working on alone. The quality of their files were so good, in fact, that they sounded like a CD when played back.

Big Idea #2: Getting the mp3 recognized by the standards committee was a losing battle.

With the help of AT&T and funding, a German team was able to submit their research to the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).

While the team was waiting for final approval from MPEG, they were unaware of what would happen next. A format war and a series of political battles lay ahead.

The Fraunhofer team was in direct competition with Musicam, which had the backing of Philips. It also had a leg up on them because it owned the manufacturing license for CDs and were very powerful lobbyists.

MPEG Audio Layer II (mp2) was created by Musicam. MPEG Audio Layer III (mp3), on the other hand, was developed by Fraunhofer. However, MPEG decided to use mp2 for digital FM radio and CDs while neglecting to assign anything to mp3 format. The latter was much better than its counterpart in terms of quality and became a standard that led the way for future improvements in sound compression technology.