The MP3 Book, Table of Contents

Historical Archive: Back in early 2000 I was approached by a publisher to write a book about MP3 audio technology; I only wrote the first two chapters before my senior project duties eclipsed book-writing and I needed to shelve the project indefinitely. 20 years later, in 2020, I've resurrected what I had written and am re-publishing it.

Here was the Table of Contents for the book as I had originally envisioned it.

  • Chapter 0: Introduction
    • What's In This Book
    • Who This Book Is For
    • How To Read This Book
  • Chapter 1: The Hype (completed)
    • What Is Internet Audio and Why Do People Use It?
    • Some Thoughts on the New Economy
    • A Brief History of Internet Audio
    • Bell Labs, 1957 - Computer Music Is Born
    • Compression in Movies & Radio - MP3 is Invented!
    • The Net Circa 1996: RealAudio, MIDI, and .AU
    • The MP3 Explosion
    • 1996 - The Release
    • 1997 - The Early Adopters
    • 1998 - The Explosion
    • sidebar - The MP3 Summit
    • 1999 - Commercial Acceptance
    • Why Did It Happen?
      • Hardware
      • Open Source → Free, Convenient Software
      • Standards
      • Memes: Idea Viruses
    • Conclusion
  • Chapter 2: The Guts of Music Technology (completed)
    • Digital Audio Basics
    • Understanding Fourier
    • The Biology of Hearing
    • Psychoacoustic Masking
    • Normal Masking
    • Tone Masking
    • Noise Masking
    • Critical Bands and Prioritization
    • Fixed-Point Quantization
    • Conclusion
  • Chapter 3: Modern Audio Codecs (unwritten)
    • MPEG Evolves
    • MP2
    • MP3
    • AAC / MPEG-4
    • Other Internet Audio Codecs
    • AC-3 / Dolbynet
    • RealAudio G2
    • VQF
    • QDesign Music Codec 2
    • EPAC
    • Summary
  • Chapter 4: The New Pipeline: The New Way To Produce, Distribute, and Listen to Music (unwritten)
    • Digital Recording
    • to DAT (studio) from CD (post-master)
    • MIDI Studios
    • Digital Editing
    • Digital Distribution
    • Digital Consumption
    • Portable Digital Audio
  • Chapter 5: Software Tools (unwritten)
    • Encoding
      • Audio Catalyst
      • BladeEnc
      • Fraunhofer's tools
      • Liquid Audio
      • MusicMatch
      • Microsoft
      • RealJukebox / RealEncoder
      • WinDAC32 & Other Rippers
      • 3rd Party Encoding
    • Playback
      • WinAMP
      • Sonique
      • Microsoft
      • FreeAMP
      • RealPlayer
      • Other Players
    • Serving
      • RealServer
      • Shoutcast & Icecast
      • Microsoft
      • 3rd party Serving
      • Live365
      • Myplay
    • Summary
  • Chapter 6: The Law (unwritten)
    • What Are You Allowed To Do With Music?
    • Recording Rights, Composition Rights
    • Streaming, Downloading, and Public Performance
    • What Laws Are There?
    • The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992
    • The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1995
    • The "No Net Copy" Act of 1997
    • Where To Look For More Information
    • Summary
  • Chapter 7: The Security Issue (unwritten)
    • Encryption Systems
    • Liquid Audio
    • a2bmusic
    • mjuice
    • Microsoft's ASX
    • Watermarking Systems
    • Aris
    • SDMI
    • Whence eMusic?
    • Why People Will Try To Protect Music Even When It's Impossible
    • Why MP3 Will Be Slow To Die
    • Summary
  • Chapter 8: How Artists Can Use The Internet (Push Out / Suck In) (unwritten)
    • The Consumer Is Your Network: How and Why Superdistribution Works
    • How To Push Out (Be Heard!)
    • How To Suck In (Get Visitors!)
    • How To Make Money From Your Fans
  • Chapter 9: Enjoying Internet Music (unwritten)
    • The Hunt For Good Music
    • Indies
    • MP3.com
    • AMP3.com
    • EMusic.com
    • Liquid Music Network
    • Popular Music
    • MusicMaker
    • Napster
    • IRC
    • Friends!
    • Streaming
    • The Portable Issue
    • Burning Audio CDs
    • Burning MP3 CDs
    • Portable MP3 Players
    • Summary
  • The Leaders of the Revolution (unwritten)
    • Michael Robertson, MP3.com
    • Karlheinz Brandenburg, FHG IIS
    • Shawn Fanning, Napster
    • Jim Griffin, OneHouse/Cherry Lane Digital
    • Gene Hoffman, eMusic
    • Justin Frankel, Nullsoft/AOL
    • Phil Wiser, Liquid Audio
    • Jack Moffit, Icecast
    • Doug Camplejohn, MyPlay
    • Ram Samudrala
    • Summary
  • Chapter 10: The Future (unwritten)
    • What are the Labels Scared of?
    • Personalized Radio
    • Donation Systems / Shareware Music
    • Multichannel Audio
    • Interactive Music
    • Collaborative Composition
    • Voice-Based Composition
    • "Cyberskat"
    • Digital Video
    • Summary
  • Appendix A: The Author's Story (completed)
  • Appendix B: Web Resources (unwritten)