Why Ogg?

Why do I use the Ogg Vorbis format for music, instead of mp3, Realaudio, or Windows Media Audio? There are several reasons.

1. Ogg is free. MP3 is patented by companies such as Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Multimedia that charge a fee for every copy of an mp3 encoder. Right now, they voluntarily don't charge anything for mp3 players (unless you're selling them commercially; then they do charge), but there's no guarantee that won't change in the future.

   Realaudio and Microsoft WMA are even more tightly controlled by their respective owners. These formats also incorporate digital anti-copying and anti-playback features which allow other people to limit the number of times you can copy or play back the files.

2. Ogg is good. Don't be fooled by the small sizes of the Ogg files here. The Ogg Vorbis files here sound as good as mp3s twice their size. In most cases, Ogg Vorbis also beats out WMA and Realaudio. See the codec review page for many more comparison tests between the formats.

   This server does not have much bandwidth to play with, and wouldn't be possible at all without the small file sizes allowed by the Ogg Vorbis format.

3. Ogg is easy. You don't have to download a 10 MB Windows Media Player or RealPlayer only to install it and find that it fills up half your screen with ads, puts 5 icons on your desktop, spies on your web browsing habits, and reminds you to register the software 50 times every day. Many existing mp3 players, such as Winamp, Macamp, and XMMS now support Ogg Vorbis by default.