Well you dont NEED to, just like you dont need to run linux instead of windows. But if you are intrested in protecting your freedom as a consumer you will support ogg. Ogg is open source and has no royalties, this means that:
1. you will never have to pay to listen to your own music files.
2.people who develop players dont have to pay royalties and therefore will not pass the costs along to consumers.
3. the format is not controlled by some company like microsoft, companies like this have their interests and not the consumers interests at heart, hence they build stuff into their formats like copy protection, digital watermarks, suicide triggers and anything else they like to protect their interests.
with ogg its free - with other formats you may think you get the stuff for free - but its getting payed for at may points along the line and that money goes into some multinationals pocket, they then use that money to design new ways to protect their assets like SDMI etc.
If you dont support formats like ogg, you will find next time you buy a computer it will refuse to play any files that dont have the correct copyright key - look at the DMCA to see whats comming up - if you use XP these things are already built into the OS
Plus technically ogg is better than mp3
from:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4416
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A lot of readers are probably wondering why we'd bother to develop Ogg Vorbis with MP3 already enjoying such widespread use. What's wrong with MP3? It's free, right? Wrong.
Have you ever noticed the amazing lack of free MP3 encoders, especially considering how popular MP3 has become? I can count them all on one hand. Some people will remember the famous letter from Fraunhofer back in late 1997. The letter asked for all the open-source and free MP3 encoders to cease and desist or start paying patent royalties. There are around 12 patents on the algorithms used by MP3, and all of them are heavily enforced by the owner Fraunhofer.
This patent enforcement has several negative effects. It's nearly impossible to have a free MP3 encoder because of the licensing fees for doing so. It costs $2.50 per download ($5 if you use the Fraunhofer code). Most of the free encoders disappeared without a way to pay this kind of tribute. MusicMatch, which makes a popular Windows encoder, sold a significant percentage of its company to Fraunhofer in exchange for an unlimited license.
Fraunhofer can change their rules at anytime, too. Prior to 1997, distributing MP3 encoders was fine. Right now, broadcasting in the MP3 format is free, but Fraunhofer stated that he intends to charge licensing fees for such use at the end of this year.
The deals the RIAA cuts for the broadcasting of commercial music are typically one-third to one-half a penny per song, which is quite reasonable considering that Fraunhofer may want to charge you 1% of revenue with a minimum of a full penny per song (these are my extrapolations from the current fees on commercial MP3 downloads). Is MP3 really worth three times more than the music it delivers?
It costs $.50 a copy to license a decoder. These aren't the only costs associated with MP3, and really, some are just my speculations (hopefully the real fee for broadcasting will be considerably lower), but the patent holders can set or change the licensing fees to whatever they want, anytime they want. And, they already stated that they intend to do so at the end of this year for broadcasting. The point isn't whether it's $15,000 or $5. The point is they have the right to set the price however they see fit.
MP3 is an old technology. Audiophiles and programmers have been tuning encoders for a long time, but the technology is not improving anymore. Even LAME, one of the best MP3 encoders around, has new options that break the specification to try to squeeze more quality out. There just isn't anymore room in the format for new tweaks or improvements.
The alternatives aren't great either. Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), which is a part of MPEG-4, has quite a bit more IP restriction than MP3. There's more than one company involved in most of the technologies, which makes licensing even more cumbersome. The VQF format is locked up tightly by NTT and Yamaha. RealNetworks and Microsoft aren't known for their open standards either. Several derivative codecs like MP+ are problematic because they face the same patent restrictions that the regular MP3 codec has.
With all of these inherent problems and the need for a better way to work with audio on the Internet, it's not surprising that a solution would come from the Open-Source Community.
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For more goto:
http://www.vorbis.com/
Don