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A Web-Based Audio Format Shaking Up The Music Industry
IF you make records and have never heard of MP3, do yourself a favor and learn all about it. The music industry is changing fast, and MP3 is the most significant technological advance for recording musicians since the cassette 4-track- possibly since even the phonograph.
When the World Wide Web appeared, it became possible for anyone to get their words and pictures out to the masses. Nowadays, if your Web site is good enough thousands-perhaps even millions-of people will find their way to it, even if you've never approached a publisher. But we musicians had long been handcuffed by the huge size of audio files, which were impractical for Internet uploading and downloading, even over fast network connections. That has all changed with MP3, a file format that allows audio files to be shrunk to less than one-tenth the original size. A song that might take up 40 megabytes on a standard CD is only about 3.7MB as an MP3.
Now you can put your music on the Web where anyone can find and download it, and there's a growing list of Web sites devoted to MP3. The format's flagship site, MP3.com (www.mp3.com), allows anyone to join its artist community and upload...