Acknowledgments  ix

Format Theory  1

1. Perceptual Techniques  32

2. Nature Builds No Telephones  61

3. Perceptual Coding and the Domestication of Noise  92

4. Making a Standard  128

5. Of MPEG, Measurement,and Men  148

6. Is Music a Thing?  184

The End of MP3  227

Notes  247

List of Interviews  295

Bibliography  299

Index  331

Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Certificate of Merit in the Best General Research in Recorded Sound category

“Rigorous and quietly philosophical, MP3 situates this world-conquering format in a broader context than the familiar stories of college kids downloading wild and the death of the recording industry. . . . Sterne’s fascination with the MP3 and its possibilities yields a book that is, really, a history of auditory culture’s startling attempts to beam sound across great distances. . . . Sterne’s MP3 is an important work in various academic fields, but his probing questions about the future of digital culture have consequences beyond the specialized reader.”—Hua Hsu, Slate

“The insights offered here are not only of interest to the study of sound and music but reach beyond to the theorisation of digital media technologies and the understanding of how communication formats develop. . . . [T]his study shows the importance of continuities and the cross-referencing of media formats, offering a fresh entry point in the histories of sound and communications as well as of digital technologies.”—Hillegonda Rietveld, Times Higher Education Supplement

“Sterne exhaustively and eloquently traces the history of the mp3 from the initial hearing model developed in Bell Labs to the current debates about piracy. As the author argues, each time we rip a CD to our hard drives, we're not only saving space in our living rooms or ensuring we have the appropriate gym soundtrack, but also reaffirming a fundamental idea about the limits of human perception.”—Eric Harvey, Pitchfork

“Unzip an MP3 and the weirdest stuff starts popping out. MP3: The Meaning Of A Format is not a dry technical or economic analysis of
the Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer III audio format . . . . Instead, Jonathan Sterne’s book unravels the paradigms and ideas that underpin the
MP3. . . . It’s an unruly, obsessive and oddly fascinating book, as befits Duke University Press’s eclectic and original texts on music and sound.”—Derek Walmsley, The Wire

“Jonathan Sterne's MP3 traces the sonic genealogy of the much-maligned format from its roots in AT&T's drive to maximise profits by squeezing as many calls as possible into a given phone line, eking out the implications of each stage along the way. A sequel of sorts to 2003's The Audible Past, which offered a history of listening between the stethoscope and the gramophone; MP3 brings the story up to the present day, taking in information theory, architectural acoustics, and the vocoder along the way, before finally settling down to the development of the MPEG standard itself and some of the more philosophical implications thrown up by it.”—Robert Barry, Review 31

“Despite, or perhaps, because of the rather dystopic scene that Sterne alludes to at the end of MP3, it falls nicely in the space between Sound Studies and Critical Information Studies. . . . Even though the mp3 may have been eclipsed by industry as the main object of inquiry in the eponomously titled MP3, Sterne succeeds admirably in detailing the promiscuity of corporate capitalism in the listening practices of our everyday lives.”—Aaron Trammell, Sounding Out! blog

“As it turned out, the most rewarding music book of 2012 wasn't about an artist, a genre, or (thank the lord) the glory days of punk. Instead, it told the story of MP3, the digital audio standard that author and communications professor Jonathan Sterne traces from early-20th-century telephone research up through contemporary debates over piracy and file-sharing. Along the way, we're taken on fascinating detours through the invention of perceptual coding, the construction (and critique) of the ideal hearing subject, international corporate debates, and an extended discussion over whether or not music should be considered a ‘thing.’ All file formats should be so lucky.” —Nick Murray, Village Voice

“Sterne’s preoccupation is with the fallacy of what one might call the official, Whig history of sound recording—a constant ascension to better fidelity, the triumph of signal over noise, Instead, he emphasizes the double movement where technology makes the musical signal more and more compressed, more ‘lousy’ than it ever was before, as is the case with the information in an MP3. . . . [T]here is no denying that it adds a necessary historical dimension to the study of music’s workings.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“This is an audiophile’s dream resource. . . . This is a book for historians of music and technology, technology scholars, and those with a love of music and audio recording. Highly recommended.”—D.B. Thornblad, Choice

“This book is valuable for anyone thinking about music in our society, and by extension, the production, dissemination and political economy of any digital arts.”—Mike Mosher, Leonardo

“In a world where debates often come simplified and binary—MP3s are destroying the music industry or freeing it, ruining the purpose and sound of music or opening it to new opportunities—why not welcome a more complex understanding of complex issues? Context is crucial. Sterne provides plenty.”—Elias Leight, Paste

“Sterne argues that if there is such a thing as ‘media theory,’ there should also be a ‘format theory.’ Studying formats, so he contends, illuminates teh workings of a medium.”—John Ridpath, Times Literary Supplement

“Sterne may be our leading music scholar. He is meticulous in digging up obscure histories of corporate and state-sponsored research, which he uses to reposition more familiar debates around music, so-called piracy and listening.” —Darren Jorgensen, Media International Australia

“The last decade has been a truly exciting one in cultural studies of sound, largely due to the generous and catalytic contributions of Jonathan Sterne...the importance of this book for critical sound studies is undeniable.”—Carolyn Elerding, Reviews in Cultural Theory

"By repositioning such apparent tangents and branches at the core of his analysis, Sterne has turned conventional approaches to file sharing inside out and produced a challenging, nuanced, and essential work of scholarship."—Joseph Schloss, Journal of American History

“Rooting the MP3 within the broader history of pychoacoustic research, Sterne provides an extensive chronicle of experiments, methodological shifts and innovations in telegraph and telephone technology.”—Alexander Provan, Art in America

Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Certificate of Merit in the Best General Research in Recorded Sound category

“Rigorous and quietly philosophical, MP3 situates this world-conquering format in a broader context than the familiar stories of college kids downloading wild and the death of the recording industry. . . . Sterne’s fascination with the MP3 and its possibilities yields a book that is, really, a history of auditory culture’s startling attempts to beam sound across great distances. . . . Sterne’s MP3 is an important work in various academic fields, but his probing questions about the future of digital culture have consequences beyond the specialized reader.”—Hua Hsu, Slate

“The insights offered here are not only of interest to the study of sound and music but reach beyond to the theorisation of digital media technologies and the understanding of how communication formats develop. . . . [T]his study shows the importance of continuities and the cross-referencing of media formats, offering a fresh entry point in the histories of sound and communications as well as of digital technologies.”—Hillegonda Rietveld, Times Higher Education Supplement

“Sterne exhaustively and eloquently traces the history of the mp3 from the initial hearing model developed in Bell Labs to the current debates about piracy. As the author argues, each time we rip a CD to our hard drives, we're not only saving space in our living rooms or ensuring we have the appropriate gym soundtrack, but also reaffirming a fundamental idea about the limits of human perception.”—Eric Harvey, Pitchfork

“Unzip an MP3 and the weirdest stuff starts popping out. MP3: The Meaning Of A Format is not a dry technical or economic analysis of
the Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer III audio format . . . . Instead, Jonathan Sterne’s book unravels the paradigms and ideas that underpin the
MP3. . . . It’s an unruly, obsessive and oddly fascinating book, as befits Duke University Press’s eclectic and original texts on music and sound.”—Derek Walmsley, The Wire

“Jonathan Sterne's MP3 traces the sonic genealogy of the much-maligned format from its roots in AT&T's drive to maximise profits by squeezing as many calls as possible into a given phone line, eking out the implications of each stage along the way. A sequel of sorts to 2003's The Audible Past, which offered a history of listening between the stethoscope and the gramophone; MP3 brings the story up to the present day, taking in information theory, architectural acoustics, and the vocoder along the way, before finally settling down to the development of the MPEG standard itself and some of the more philosophical implications thrown up by it.”—Robert Barry, Review 31

“Despite, or perhaps, because of the rather dystopic scene that Sterne alludes to at the end of MP3, it falls nicely in the space between Sound Studies and Critical Information Studies. . . . Even though the mp3 may have been eclipsed by industry as the main object of inquiry in the eponomously titled MP3, Sterne succeeds admirably in detailing the promiscuity of corporate capitalism in the listening practices of our everyday lives.”—Aaron Trammell, Sounding Out! blog

“As it turned out, the most rewarding music book of 2012 wasn't about an artist, a genre, or (thank the lord) the glory days of punk. Instead, it told the story of MP3, the digital audio standard that author and communications professor Jonathan Sterne traces from early-20th-century telephone research up through contemporary debates over piracy and file-sharing. Along the way, we're taken on fascinating detours through the invention of perceptual coding, the construction (and critique) of the ideal hearing subject, international corporate debates, and an extended discussion over whether or not music should be considered a ‘thing.’ All file formats should be so lucky.” —Nick Murray, Village Voice

“Sterne’s preoccupation is with the fallacy of what one might call the official, Whig history of sound recording—a constant ascension to better fidelity, the triumph of signal over noise, Instead, he emphasizes the double movement where technology makes the musical signal more and more compressed, more ‘lousy’ than it ever was before, as is the case with the information in an MP3. . . . [T]here is no denying that it adds a necessary historical dimension to the study of music’s workings.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“This is an audiophile’s dream resource. . . . This is a book for historians of music and technology, technology scholars, and those with a love of music and audio recording. Highly recommended.”—D.B. Thornblad, Choice

“This book is valuable for anyone thinking about music in our society, and by extension, the production, dissemination and political economy of any digital arts.”—Mike Mosher, Leonardo

“In a world where debates often come simplified and binary—MP3s are destroying the music industry or freeing it, ruining the purpose and sound of music or opening it to new opportunities—why not welcome a more complex understanding of complex issues? Context is crucial. Sterne provides plenty.”—Elias Leight, Paste

“Sterne argues that if there is such a thing as ‘media theory,’ there should also be a ‘format theory.’ Studying formats, so he contends, illuminates teh workings of a medium.”—John Ridpath, Times Literary Supplement

“Sterne may be our leading music scholar. He is meticulous in digging up obscure histories of corporate and state-sponsored research, which he uses to reposition more familiar debates around music, so-called piracy and listening.” —Darren Jorgensen, Media International Australia

“The last decade has been a truly exciting one in cultural studies of sound, largely due to the generous and catalytic contributions of Jonathan Sterne...the importance of this book for critical sound studies is undeniable.”—Carolyn Elerding, Reviews in Cultural Theory

"By repositioning such apparent tangents and branches at the core of his analysis, Sterne has turned conventional approaches to file sharing inside out and produced a challenging, nuanced, and essential work of scholarship."—Joseph Schloss, Journal of American History

“Rooting the MP3 within the broader history of pychoacoustic research, Sterne provides an extensive chronicle of experiments, methodological shifts and innovations in telegraph and telephone technology.”—Alexander Provan, Art in America

"MP3: The Meaning of a Format is packed with great stories. It's a brilliant book about how we listen and how we make music. It traces the way MP3s have been key to the way technology is revolutionizing music."—Laurie Anderson, artist/musician

"In this authoritative and fascinating book, Jonathan Sterne, a leading scholar of sound studies, traces MP3 technology back to its roots in telephone research. His book is about not only how musical experience became equated with one format but also how subjectivity itself is formatted. Sterne decompresses history to weave a wonderful tale of the many surprising links and twists embedded in those tiny files."—Trevor Pinch, coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer

"As we continue to inhabit the digital universe created by the invention of the computer, Jonathan Sterne provides us with an important cultural history and theory of the pervasive MP3 audio format. His insights go deep into our basic ideas of hearing and listening, as well as of information, showing how these ideas are tied to twentieth-century media."—Pauline Oliveros, composer and improviser, founder of the Deep Listening Institute, and Distinguished Research Professor of Music, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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