Further Reading
Hetland, Lois. “Listening to Music Enhances Spatial-
Temporal Reasoning: Evidence for the ‘Mozart
Effect.’”The Journal of Aesthetic Appreciation 34
(2000): 105-148.
Rauscher, Frances H., and Sean C. Hinton. “The Mo-
zart Effect: Music Listening Is Not Music Instruc-
tion.”Educational Psychologist41 (2006): 233-238.
Rauscher, Frances H., Gordon L. Shaw, and Kather-
ine N. Ky. “Music and Spatial Task Performance.”
Nature365 (1993): 611.
Russell N. Carney
See also Classical music; Education in the United
States; Music; Psychology.
MP3 format
Definition Digital audio-encoding format
MPEG Audio Layer 3, also known as MP3, is a method of
digital audio compression that significantly decreases the
size of an audio file while minimizing reduction of sound
quality. The late 1990’s saw the release of portable music
players that used this revolutionar y digital audio-encoding
format. The technology allowed for improved storage of
audio data and faster online transmission of music, facili-
tating the development of computer-based music distribu-
tion centers like Napster and amazingly small music players
like Apple Computer’s revolutionar y iPod.
The first portable music systems tapped into a desire
for mobility in the music-listening public in the
1980’s, as seen with the immense popularity of the
Walkman cassette player, introduced by Sony in
1979, and the D-50 Discman compact disc (CD)
player, in 1984. Throughout the 1980’s, music lovers
saw continuing improvements to media-storage
methods that would not only allow better sound re-
production but also eliminate the tendency of CD
players to “skip” when the players were subjected to
vibration. The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated
Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany, was founded in
1985 to research audio- and video-source coding,
among other commercial projects. Initially headed
by Dr. Deiter Seitzer, and later by Drs. Heinz Ger-
haeuser and Karlheinz Brandenburg (the “father”
of the MP3), the Fraunhofer team started develop-
ing a digital audio-encoding format under the proj-
ect name of EUREKA.
In 1993, Fraunhofer researchers formally named
their audio-encoding format “MP3” as a simplified
file name extension. MP3 was then selected by the
WorldSpace satellite broadcasting system as that sys-
tem’s coding format of choice. Then, on July 7,
1994, 13enc, a software MP3 encoder developed by
the Fraunhofer Society, was released to the general
public as a generic audio format. The format had im-
mediate appeal to users because of its small size (it
took up little computer memory) and its broad
range of use in a variety of music players (as opposed
to such proprietary formats as Vorbis and Windows
Media Audio, or WMA). In 1998, the Rio PMP300,
the first music player capable of handling the new
encoding format, was released and became the fore-
runner of many new players that would be able to
hold hundreds, if not thousands, of audio record-
ings in digital format. The music player contained
32 megabytes of memory, enough to hold about
twelve songs.Impact The streamlined nature of the MP3 format
made it possible for online file servers to act as vir-
tual storehouses of audio files and to support a newlyThe Nineties in America MP3 format 589
The Rio PMP300 digital portable music player, the first device to
use the MP3 format.(AP/Wide World Photos)