The mp3 as cultural artifact

Abstract

The mp3 lies at the center of important debates around intellectual property and file-sharing, but it is also a cultural artifact in its own right. This article examines the design of the mp3 from both industrial and psychoacoustic perspectives to explain better why mp3s are so easy to exchange and the auditory dimensions of that process of exchange. As a container technology for recorded sound, the mp3 shows that the quality of ‘portability’ is central to the history of auditory representation. As a psychoacoustic technology that literally plays its listeners, the mp3 shows that digital audio culture works according to logics somewhat distinct from digital visual culture.