Karlheinz Brandenburg, head of the Fraunhofer Working Group for Electronic Media Technology Ilmenau, developed the audio file format that turned the entire music industry upside down. — Heinz Hirndorf/dpa
MPEG Layer 1 has long been forgotten. MPEG Layer 2 can sometimes still be found in old TV sets. But it was MPEG Layer 3, better known as the MP3, that spurred a revolution in music.
It started 25 years ago in July 1995, when a team of researchers in Germany found a way to compress audio data into a smaller file that was easier to share online.
