MP3 allows a 40-megabyte song to be compressed to 4 megabytes or less, so it can be transferred in one-tenth the time. These devices will evolve quickly, as will the technical standards, so cautious consumers may want to waitįor the chorus before plunking down a couple of C-notes.Ĭompression is very important for the Rio, and indeed for music distribution over the Internet. Quickly become an alternative to portable cassette or CD players, and that would further strengthen MP3's role at the desktop. The Rio is the first and so far only portable MP3 player, so there is a lot of pent-up demand for it among MP3 fans, especially young people who are already using their computers as alternatives to dorm-room stereos.
MP3 allows big audio files to be condensed to about one-tenth their size without significantly harming the music quality. It will eventually be replaced by something better, but for now, MP3 is the Internet softwareĭu jour.
MP3, whose formal technical name is MPEG Level 3, is emerging as the most popular format for storing music on computer hard disks and on the Internet. It goes in one virtual ear and out the other. But with a few exceptions, the music is transient. More than 40 million copies of a free program called Real Player have been downloaded from Real Networks (to enable Web users to listen to music and radio broadcasts "streaming" through their computers. There is nothing new about music on the Internet, of course. The catalyst is a compression formula called MP3, which is the basis of the $199.95 Rio player, from Diamond Multimedia, and the music industry's sudden intense interest Having seen computer nerds dancing at their company parties, I can say with little fear of contradiction that as dancers, they are very giftedīut these computer programmers are transforming the music industry. We can all be grateful that Internet music is a new distribution system, not a new musical genre. HE Diamond Rio PMP300 personal music player, one of the most significant new products to appear in 1998, comes in a box that promises "Internet music
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