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Does Mp3 Lose Quality Over Time?

There are various formats of audio all available for various purposes. In this post I’ll zero in on one audio format which is mp3.

Mp3 is the standard version of audio that people are used to. If you remember mp3 players, then you remember how they only supported only MP3 Audio format.

Fast forward to today, we are in the digital era and one interesting question that I saw in an online forum was simply a person asking if MP3 loses quality with time.

In this post I’m going to discuss this and give you some insight so you understand MP3 a little better.

Does MP3 lose quality over time?

Digital files like MP3 do not lose quality over time because they’re digitally stored. Any digital file is basically a stored segment or block of information that is available to a computer program. Unless your drive is damaged leading to file corruption, you shouldn’t encounter any loss in quality.

MP3 encoding

As many of you may know, MP3 is a lossy format and suffers compression when it’s encoded.

This loss in quality doesn’t necessarily continue when stored on a computer. Since Mp3 files are digital files, it means they’re 1’s and 0’s of binary code.

It’s therefore important to point out that storing files digitally may be the best way to preserve them, provided that the storage medium is stable.

Stability is everything because hardware just like software is susceptible to damage.

I’m going to cover more of this in the next point to sort of give you an inside look into the common issues with digital storage.

Data corruption

Data corruption is the one downside that comes with storing files digitally. You can’t always be guaranteed that your computer will stay error or corruption free.

For example, there are so many virus and malware files spread out across the Internet and somebody that doesn’t know to stir clear of such files may end up downloading malware that could potentially corrupt the whole system.

MP3 files in such a situation could become corrupted. Not because they degrade in quality over time but due to malware that may is able to corrupt such files.

This is the most common theme in computer files. While files may hold the advantage of being stored digitally without the issue ofbpotential degradation in quality, digital files are susceptible to file corruption which could could render them unusable.

Safe ways to store MP3 files

There are so many ways you can store MP3 files and I’m going to discuss some of these below.

Use an External Hard Drive

A lot of computers are coming out with SSD hard drives. These drives are incredibly fast and have the ability to boot your computer in just seconds.

On the downside, they’re expensive to have and they’re smaller in size. Computers with SSD drives are often 256 GB. That’s pretty small for your computer programs and your music collection.

An alternative is to use an external hard drive for your music collection.

This can be a great way to have access to your music and maintain a fast computer. It will help you keep your music secure, too.

Store Your Music on the Cloud

Another potential way of storing MP3 files is on the cloud.

There are a few ways that you can store music in the cloud.

You could go for a service like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive.

The main problem with that is that while they are convenient and affordable, they are frequent targets of hackers seeking access to your stored files.

Another great option is to store your music in a separate data centre. With this option, your music can be secure while giving you  full control over the storage space. In most cases, you’re not sharing cloud resources with other accounts, which could put your data at risk.

Music Services

Another great option for storing MP3 files digitally is music services.

Google, Apple, and Amazon all have music services that allow you to upload your library to their servers and stream it from any device that’s connected to the service.

This allows you to have your music collection accessible on your various devices.

Your Music can be safely stored this way and you could avoid issues of data corruption or loss of data.

The only downside to storing music on such services is that when the service decides to shut down operations, you have to move your files or risk losing them all.

Does Mp3 Lose Quality Over Time?
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