.mp3 files

Common questions

How do I open a .mp3 file?

On Windows use Media Player (built in); on macOS use Music (built in); on Linux use Rhythmbox / Music (built in). The lossy audio format that made digital music portable, and still plays on everything.

What is a .mp3 file?

MPEG-1 Audio Layer III. MP3 came out of the Fraunhofer Institute and the MPEG standardisation process around 1993 and dominated music for two decades. Its patents all expired by 2017, so it is now free to use, and no device made in the last twenty-five years fails to play one.

Can I convert a .mp3 file?

Yes. It is usually converted to .wav, .flac, .m4a, .ogg or .aac, either by exporting from one of the programs listed above or with a format converter.

Related pages

• .wav — Waveform Audio File Uncompressed audio — perfect quality, very large files, universal support.
• .m4a — MPEG-4 Audio Audio in an MP4 container — what iTunes, Voice Memos and most modern recorders p
• .flac — Free Lossless Audio Codec Compressed audio that throws nothing away — about half the size of WAV, bit-for-
• .aac — Advanced Audio Coding The successor to MP3 — better sound per byte, used by YouTube, Apple and broadca
• .ogg — Ogg Vorbis Audio The open, patent-free audio format used by Spotify, Wikipedia and countless game
• .opus — Opus Audio The modern low-latency codec behind WhatsApp voice notes, Discord and web calls.
• .mid — MIDI Sequence Not audio at all — a list of notes and instructions for a synthesiser to perform
• .m3u — Media Playlist A plain-text list of tracks or stream URLs — it holds no audio itself.
• .wma — Windows Media Audio Microsoft's music format from the Windows XP years, now legacy.
• .aiff — Audio Interchange File Format Apple's uncompressed audio format — the Mac equivalent of WAV.
• .m4b — MPEG-4 Audiobook An audiobook file that remembers your place and supports chapters.
• .amr — Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio The narrow-band speech codec behind old phone voice recordings and MMS messages.