MP3 Technology.

MP3 technology has had a profound impact on the music industry. Today, many artists measure their success by sellings millions of downloads on iTunes. People find it hard to believe that there was a time without MP3 players, but such a time did exist. And that time was not all that long ago.

The development of MP3 technology began in the 1980s, when the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany began looking for new ways to compress music. Karlheinz Brandenburg stood at the forefront of this research, and fought for the technology when it seemed destined to failure.

Often referred to as the “father of the MP3,” Brandenburg completed the majority of his work in MP3 technology while finishing a dissertation for the electrical engineering program at Friedrich-Alexander University. His research resulted in the development of MPEG-1 Layer 3 (also known as MP3) and MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC.

The Fraunhofer Institute received the German patent for MP3 in 1989. For the next several years, the Institute devoted itself to making the technology work. Professor Dieter Seitzer developed the audio coding system that ultimately led to the success of MP3 technology. In 1994, MPEG-1 was published. MPEG-2 followed in 1995. The technology then spread from Germany into the United States, where the patent for MP3 was issued in 1996.

Now that audio tracks could be compressed in the form of MP3 files, some sort of gadget had to be created so that people could actually make use of the compressed audio. In the United States, Diamond Multimedia came out with the Rio in September, 1998. The MP3 player was about the size of a deck of cards and could hold about an hour's worth of music. Korea's Saehan Information Systems introduced the MPMan around the same time. This MP3 player was more compact than the Rio.

Early MP3 players were a step up from portable CD players, but they were still very inconvenient. Users often found loading the players to be a major hassle, especially since the devices could only hold an hour's worth of music. With an estimated capacity of 1,000 songs, Apple's iPod represented a major step forward in the world of portable music.

Since the release of the first iPod in 2001, Apple has developed more and more advanced MP3 players, some of which that can hold over 40,000 songs. Other companies have released MP3 players modeled after the iPod, such as the Microsoft Zune. Although these companies have profited off the technology, no player has been nearly as successful among consumers as the iPod. Feel free to upload your player with the Rhythm and Blues, Soul, Gospel, Jazz and Christian songs at Foxtunes.com.