A brief history of MPEG layer 3 (MP3)

MP3 is a compressed file format. It's official name is 'MPEG layer 3' which is abbreviated as MP3. The MP3 file format was developed between 1987 and 1989 in Germany (at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits). 1992 the MP3 file format was patented in Germany and became part of the MPEG standard. The U.S. patent dates from 1996.
The MP3 file format is widely used on computers and portable MP3 players.

The format became extremely popular through Napster's and others file-sharing networks. Following the pressure of a overmighty music industry, Napster was declared illegal, but it's successors have adapted and mp3 continues the most popular file format for nowadays legal music download sites, called also peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs, like MP3Advance.