What is Ogg Vorbis?

Spotify uses a music format called Ogg Vorbis

(www.vorbis.com), which sounds like

something from outer space, to stream tracks

to you. Ogg Vorbis is a free, open-source format

that developers can use on a commercial or

noncommercial basis. You can’t play them in

anything other than Spotify because Spotify

restricts them for copy-protection purposes.

Ogg Vorbis has several benefits over MP3 – for

the same level of audio quality, you get a far

smaller file size than with an MP3 because Ogg

is more efficient at compressing data, so you

use less disk space on your computer.

Ogg has a variable bitrate, depending on the

audio levels of the track – the file takes up only

as much room as necessary to get the highest

fidelity sound it can. For example, it knows that

a few seconds of silence in a track can be com-

pressed more than a section of song featuring

vocals and instruments.

But why the out-of-this-world name, Ogg

Vorbis? It’s a combination of ogg, a move in the

game Netrek, and Vorbis, a character from a

Terry Pratchett book.

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