This seems to be a little known fact. Decoding MP3's from your software demands a royalty to Thompson. Their site says if you sell under 5k units then this doesnt apply.

Check out:

http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/developer.html

Has anybody here actually payed them royalties?

i didnt even know about this actually..:) ....but now i know not to use mp3 music....;) ...i dont wanna pay them...:p ......so ill use other formats like ogg, midi, etc....

I think their licensing terms are quite confusing. I had always heard that if your app didn't do the decoding itself, but instead used a licensed decoder (such as the codecs that come with DirectMedia or whatever), then you weren't responsible for paying a license fee, as it has already been paid for. However, their licensing terms now say there is a specific fee category for games.

They also say games with less than 5000 copies distributed aren't responsible for the fee, but they aren't clear whether this is 5000 shareware downloads or 5000 sales. I would have to assume downloads. If so, that is kind of an unfortunate cut off. If you assume even a 2% conversion rate (which is pretty good) that means you will have about 100 sales. Even for a $40 game with no overhead costs, you only make $4000. The license fees are $2500/$3750. Can you say ouch? For a game with maybe $18 in profits, you will actually lose money.

Additionally, I thought I saw on their site one time where they said you also had to pay a per-song fee for distributing the music content. However, I don't see anything like that mentioned.

All in all, I think they completely killed my interest in using MP3s in software before it even started. If I need to use something like that, I would end up going with Ogg (and just hope someone doesn't come out of the woodwork with a patent on it in 10 years).

Originally posted by LordKronos
They also say games with less than 5000 copies distributed aren't responsible for the fee, but they aren't clear whether this is 5000 shareware downloads or 5000 sales. I would have to assume downloads. If so, that is kind of an unfortunate cut off. If you assume even a 2% conversion rate (which is pretty good) that means you will have about 100 sales. Even for a $40 game with no overhead costs, you only make $4000. The license fees are $2500/$3750. Can you say ouch? For a game with maybe $18 in profits, you will actually lose money.


I think its a sale number not download number. The reason I say this is that a developer may not publish their download numbers, making it impossible for them to know. While if its sale numbers, I'm pretty sure they can check the books and see if it sold or not 5k units.

But yep, mp3 licensing is an old one, there are other free alternatives (and easier to work with) outthere so I would wouldn't worry too much about it.

yeah, It does seem odd. I wonder if using an already purchased codec would require a royalty payment. Using MS's built in mp3 support makes sense.

I cant believe that a standardised format like mp3 could demand a royalty. its like having to pay for every jpeg thats sold commercially.

Originally posted by Nick Bischoff
I cant believe that a standardised format like mp3 could demand a royalty. its like having to pay for every jpeg thats sold commercially.

Don't joke about that. You may not be aware, but this summer a company called Forgent came out of the woodwork with a patent that they have been sitting on since 1986 which they claim JPEG compression infringes on. I'm not sure what is going on with that currently, but I do know that Sony and a couple of other companies signed multi-million dollar licensing deals to make sure they don't end up in hot water (just in case...). The "patent and ambush" technique is kind of sad, but I guess it's something we have to live with for the time being. Should they decide to actually persue their patent, just think of all the applications and devices that potentially infringe. Every image editor (even MS Paint) or viewer, web browser, and layout/publication application. Every web cam and digital camera, and even some of the newer digital camcorders. It's quite mindboggling.

Yes, it sure is confusing. Last year I tried to find out this kind of information. The Fraunhofer Institute actually holds all the patents on mp3. They decided to let this stay relatively unknown until it got popular. Then they decided that they wanted to start enforcing this and apply fees to it. They are using Thomson Electronics as a collector of these royalties. To answer another thought, yes, there are "playback fees," but they are even lesser known about because they didn't start enforcing it at the same time as other fees. I wonder what they'll think of next, a "per minute" fee for each conversion? I can't be bothered. When converting from wav, Ogg is definately the way to go and it is better anyway. Spread the word when you can.

does anyone know where to get a MP3/WAV --> OGG converter? :)

I don't know of a converter, but I just wanted to say that if at all possible, you should convert from wave to ogg, not mp3 to ogg. mp3 and ogg both use lossy compression, but the parts of data they throw out is different. If you convert mp3 to ogg, you get the worst of both formats and end up with a lower quality recording.

There is a command-line Wave to Ogg converter called OggEnc 1.0 (http://www.un4seen.com/files/oggenc.zip). I know you can get it from Un4seen (http://www.un4seen.com/music/). These are the guys who make the Bass sound library.

OK, I just took a look around at http://www.vorbis.com/ and found a link to Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ) which appears to be a free editor you can also use to do conversion.

One thing to note...I'm not sure if this situation exists with ogg, but as I understand things, with mp3 the quality of the resulting file can vary depending on the encoder used. Mp3 compression isn't an exact process like ZIP compression. Instead, some encoders give much better quality than others at a given compression ratio. I suspect ogg compression is similar. Perhaps someone more familiar with ogg can chime in here.

Another thing I am curious about...who developed the ogg format? Looking over vorbis.com and xiph.org I can see what this whole project is about and what its goal are, but I see nothing about who helped develop this.

I'm sure someone has questioned this before, but what groups were involved, and what are their credentials? Do they have extensive experience in this field? Reading the web site, it almost sounds like a few guys just decided they didn't like the MP3 licensing terms, decided to create something else, and did it. The thing is, coming up with a new and great compression sceme isn't something you just decide to do an do it. The only way I see it being done is either by someone with extensive industry experience, or to rediscover something that isn't really new. In the latter case, the rediscovered technique could actually be full of the same landmines as MP3 was. What steps have been taken to ensure the method of compression used is in fact not covered by any patent that will come back to haunt us 10 years down the road, when ogg is the new "royalty free" standard?

Well, you'll find that you are right about your guess as to who made Ogg and and why. The project is lead by a guy named Christopher Montgomery who went to MIT. He and some other computer scientists were fed up with the Fraunhofer Institute slapping lawsuits on everything. They decided they would make their own codec and have been working steadily on it since late in 1998, so Ogg already has more then a few codec generations behind it. Here's an interview with Christopher: http://www.advogato.org/article/56.html It's a bit old, but it answers a lot of questions. I've also wondered if some Ogg encoders were significantly better than others, but I use the dbPoweramp encoder. It seems to work just fine and I really like the flexible interface it has. If anyone knows of a better one be sure to tell us.

Hydroaxe,
Thanks for that link. That interview definitely explained a few things. At least now I see that he has spent 6 years working on the project, has had several failures (or at least "less successful" iterations), has done quite a bit of research into the field, and also has some form of corporate backing. It doesn't remove my concerns that there may still be some patents lurking over ogg, but at least I see the developer does have some credibility and that he didn't magicly stumble onto the solution to the MP3 patent problem...he's been working on ogg since before the problem really even existed.

I remember reading (but can't find a referance to it at the mement) that AOL laywers went through Vorbis with a fine tooth comb before they released Winamp with Ogg vorbis support.

The article was refering to how Fraunhofer were going to sue as soon as Vorbis hit version 1.0, analysts has said that they didn't have a case but if they could keep ogg legally tied up for a year it would stop big companies from adopting it. AOL aparantly pre-empted them by sending in a team of lawyers and gettimg them to essentially say 'The AOL-Time Warner legal dept says it's patent free'

As far as I am aware Xiph havn't been sued (yet), so it seems to have worked.

(of couse, this is all from memory so I could be horribly wrong)

It sounds like quite an interesting article. It's scary how the Fraunhofer Institute is trying to bully their competition. Actually, it's just dispicable. The Fraunhofer Institute is supposedly a non-profit organization named in honor of a deceased inventor, reasearcher and entrepenuer. Unless he was greedy, I doubt that they're really honoring his name. (LordKronos, you're wlecome for the link.)

I was reading some articles on Ogg, and one had this quote from someone at Thompson:
"We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property," Linde said. "We think it is likely they are infringing."

Does that sound arrogant, or what? Its like saying "We haven't really looked at it, but come on now, how could they possibly not be using our stuff? Do you think they really could have come up with their own ideas?"

Yeah, that was a real cheap shot! Somehow, it made me laugh out loud, but it's like some giant game publisher trying to kill an indie developer so they can get a few more dollars! I copied the quote, did a search and found some links. One was an article called "Do Your Homework." The journalist had the same beef with the quote you mentioned. The others were for news archives on it. That Linde guy holds the title of "Vice President of New Business" for Fraunhofer. What a professional. :mad: I've learned a lot since the beginning of this post. It's amazing how much money they are making at this.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:URSJUCwTO5AC:news.com.com/news/0-1005-200-4101023.html++%22We+doubt+very+much+that+they+are+not+using+Fraunhofer+and+Thomson+intellectual+property,%22%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:7Ozwyiom8DEC:[url]www.linuxjournal.com/article.php%3Fsid%3D5093++%22We+doubt+very+much+that+they+are+not+using+Fraunhofer+and+Thomson+intellectual+property,%22%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8