.MP3 file extension - Compressed audio and music file, mp3 songs or ringtones
What is mp3 file? How to open mp3 files?
The mp3 file extension is used for MPEG-1 Layer III Audio Streams - audio files commonly referred as MP3s. This standard has evolved from early MPEG (The Moving Picture Experts Group) work. It is an audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications.
MP3 lossy audio compression algorithm was developed by Karlheinz Brandenburg on German Fraunhofer Institute and introduced it in 1991.
MP3 uses perceptual audio coding to compress CD-quality sound with almost the same fidelity. It is the most used audio file format to store music supported by various software and hardware multimedia players as well as mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, cd players, djs decks etc.
There also exists a lossless version called MP3HD. Both share the same MP3 file extension.
Fraunhofer Institute, a developer and owner of rights for MP3, announced MP3 format as obsolete in May 2017.
MIME types used for mp3 sound files:
audio/mp3
audio/mpeg3
audio/mpg
audio/mpeg
audio/x-mpeg
audio/x-mpeg-3
audio/mp3
audio/x-mpegaudio
audio/x-mpg
audio/x-mp3
audio/mpeg3
video/mpeg
video/x-mpeg
Updated: November 2, 2018
The default software associated to open mp3 file:
Company or developer:
VideoLAN Project Team
Very popular multimedia player developed for Windows, Apple Mac, Linux, Unix and various other operating systems and platforms.
VLC can playback many of the video formats (AVI, MKV, OGV, WMV, ASF, MOV...) and audio formats (MP3, AAC, M4A, OGG, FLAC...) as well as support of subtitles for video. It can also be used as a streaming server and multimedia transcoder.
Microsoft Windows Media Player 
Company or developer:
Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Windows Media Player is default multimedia player installed in Microsoft Windows. WMP can manage music, videos and pictures in computer, play or view them, sync them with portable devices, or burn them on CD/DVD media. It also supports home media sharing with other computers.
Company or developer:
Apple, Inc.
Apple iTunes is multimedia application distributed with Apple macOS operating system. It organizes and plays digital music and videos. iTunes is also used to manage Apple's portable devices, such as iPod, iPhone and iPad.
List of software applications associated to the .mp3 file extension
Recommended software programs are sorted by OS platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android etc.)
and possible program actions that can be done with the file: like open mp3 file, edit mp3 file, convert mp3 file, view mp3 file, play mp3 file etc. (if exist software for corresponding action in File-Extensions.org's database).
Hint:
Click on the tab below to simply browse between the application actions, to quickly get a list of recommended software, which is able to perform the specified software action, such as opening, editing or converting mp3 files.
Software that open mp3 file - Compressed audio and music file, mp3 songs or ringtones
Programs supporting the exension mp3 on the main platforms Windows, Mac, Linux or mobile. Click on the link to get more information about listed programs for open mp3 file action.
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