What are MP3s, and why should I use them? MP3 is the abbreviation for MPEG Audio Layer 3, a derivative of the MPEG standard for A/V storage.

Simply put, MP3 is a digital music format that manages to compress large audio files into incredibly small, near-CD-quality, files. 
This compression is achieved by removing inaudible information from the desired file. (Sound quality is not compromised.) 
Users can easily store MP3s on computers, upload and download them over the Internet and even e-mail them to friends. 

There are many reasons people choose MP3s over other available formats. Today there are a variety of portable MP3 players for sale and a number of tools for finding MP3s. 
With minimal effort, anyone can track down his or her favorite songs. However, most people use MP3s because they have good sound quality, and they are easy to transfer from place to place. 
Perhaps the real question is why shouldn't you use MP3s? 

As an example of how great the powers of MP3 are, consider the classic Beach Boys song God Only Knows. As a standard CD file, it fills up 29MB of hard-drive space. 
This one track would take almost two hours to download with a 56K modem. When converted to MP3 format, this same file is a little more than 3MB, just one tenth the size! Granted, 
it would still take ten minutes to download from the Web over a modem, but you can store multiple MP3s on your hard drive and download them rapidly over an ISDN or faster connection.