With the invention of music that could be shared and played digitally, companies have been trying to find ways to make music files higher quality while at the same time trying to keep the files as small as possible. In the modern world, the currently accepted standard for digital music is the MP3 format. Invented by the German company Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft, MP3 is now the most common and widely used format for music. You can find music in the MP3 format everywhere. Itunes, for example, sells all of its music in the MP3 format and most portable music players, such as the Ipod and Zune, are called MP3 Players because they play MP3 files. But how was MP3 invented and how did it become so popular? It all begins with a research project that Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft started code-named Eureka.

Project EU147, also known as Eureka, was started in the year 1987. The project was lead by Prof. Heinz Gerhaeuser. Focusing on LC-ATC (Low Complexity Adaptive Transform Coding) algorithm the researchers started to write the codec. By 1989, the research team finished coding their own algorithm which was described as exhibiting, "many of characteristics of the eventual MP3 coder, including a high frequency resolution filterbank, non-uniform quantization, Huffman coding, and side information structure." Over the next couple of years, the team would continue to build and improve this algorithm.

Meanwhile, Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) started developing the first digital video and audio standards which would be called MPEG. This system contained three layers, named Layer 1, Layer 2, and Layer 3. By this time, project Eureka had finished creating their unnamed codec and it was accepted by MPEG and was used to create the MPEG Layer 3 format. Layer 3 ended up being the most effect codec in terms of size and was adopted as the worldwide standard for storing music on the relatively small hard drives of computers in that time period.

In 1995, MPEG held an internet vote for what the name should be for MPEG Layer 3 and the winning name was MP3 with the file extension .mp3. From this point on, MPEG Layer 3 was officially called MP3 and was considered the standard format for digital music.

In 1998, MP3 became even more popular with the invention of the MPMAN which was the first headphone stereos that were capable of storing and playing MP3 music either downloaded off the internet or ripped from a CD. This invention would lead to the creation of the very popular MP3 Player.

Even to this day MP3 continues to be the most popular format for digital music. Though there is yet to be a format that can challenge MP3, there are companies still researching ways to make music files smaller and better quality and some day in the future there may come a format which is even better than MP3.

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