MP3 licensing woes...

[mustardseed]

I'm working on a game right now, and I want my users to be able to select their own background music at the beginning of a level. Most users are going to have music in MP3 format and I would like to support the playback of these files but I dont want to have to pay any extra fees. Is there a way around this restriction? Maybe using quicktime to playback the files? Any ideas?

Would this be easier to do on a Mac since quicktime is integrated with the OS?

[princec]

Windows Media Player is more or less integrated into Windows too so no worries on that front either.

Or of course you could just ignore the licensing.

Cas :)

[Rubs]

Supply a free mp3 to ogg converter with your game and play oggs :) Just kiddin' of course.

[lennard]

Why are there mp3 licensing fees?

Googling:

http://www.fareham.org/mpg123/index.shtml

What am I missing?

[gosub]

I asked the company that licenses MP3 a similar question. The short answer is that you may use Windows Media Player (or DirectShow, or whatever is built in to Windows) to decode MP3s without paying a license fee. I didn't ask about Quicktime or MAC. See this thread:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=5007&highlight=mp3+license

-Jeremy

[Fost]

Thompson MM are owed $2,500 per title (for games), but you can use it for less than 5000 copies though. So if you put away 50c per copy, it would pay for itself. Which is another way of looking at it.

[HairyTroll]

Why are there mp3 licensing fees?

Unless he uses Winamp, Windows Media player or some other application that has already taken the hit on the licensing cost, he is required to pony up for the mp3 license himself.

For example, see the FMOD faq here:

MP3 Licensing issues (http://www.fmod.org/fmodlicense.html)

You pay for FMOD, but if you use FMOD to play mp3's in a game then you must have a license.

[gosub]

To clarify what I said above: You can make your program play user supplied MP3s without paying any license fees provided you use built in Windows functions to do it. Microsoft paid that license for you. FMOD, Bass, and Winamp are not part of Windows, so they don't count.

That's an important distinction for those of us who allow users to select their own music during game play. Use OGG for all your own sounds, and Windows to decode user supplied MP3s.

-Jeremy