Petteri Pyyny
26 Mar 2002 14:55
The new joint licensing model for MPEG-4 AAC audio encoding technology that was introduced today received immediately praises from streaming industry's representative group ISMA and various technology companies like Apple.
Unlike its sister technology, MPEG-4 video, the audio licensing terms seem much more reasonable for licensees. Licensees would pay per "channel" or stream a $0.50 fee and the price would be capped at $250,000 per annum for encoder products and at $25,000 per annum for decoders (players).
MPEG LA which introduced its joint MPEG-4 video licensing model earlier this year raised strong opposition by setting fees based on the streamed/encoded length of the video.
It seems that MPEG-4 AAC might actually be an actual competitor for MP3 format and to Microsoft's WMA format. Ok, ok, there are tons of excellent quality audio encoding products already, most of them cheaper than AAC, but hey -- they don't have multi-billion dollar companies behind the formats. It will be interesting to see how AAC will compete with OGG Vorbis..