July 14, 1995: The MP3 file format receives its official name as the new .bit file extension gets changed to .mp3. The technology allows the compression of a standard CD .wav file to one-tenth its original size, courtesy of some smart algorithms.

The format will revolutionize the music industry — and put Apple on the road to world dominance.

The MP3 enables easy sharing of music tracks online and makes music more portable than ever. Apple’s iPod will become the world’s best-known MP3 player, quickly capitalizing on the new format.

This YouTube download post is brought to you by iTubeGo.

If you like downloading videos and other media from various websites, a great utility to have is iTubeGo YouTube Downloader. With it, you can download YouTube videos, audio, playlists and whole channels quite easily and quickly. And you can easily convert files to other formats, like MP3 and MP4.

We’ll get into more detail below about iTubeGo YouTube Downloader and where you can get it.

Editor’s note: As of Feb. 10, 2010, the tip outlined below no longer works. However, we published a new post about an iOS shortcut that currently does work: “Finally — a YouTube download shortcut for iOS that actually works.” Enjoy.

YouTube isn’t just for video. Lots of folks use it to post audio files, only they gum up the songs with slideshows so they can upload them to the video-publishing service. There are all kinds of apps that let you convert a YouTube video back into an MP3, but today we’re going to see how to convert a video to an MP3 right in Safari, using Apple’a own Workflow/Shortcuts app.

Converting an audio track to MP3 on the Mac is dead easy. Just open it with iTunes, and choose the File > Convert option from the menu bar. On iOS, though, there’s no native way to do this. There are lots of shonky-looking apps in the App Store that offer to create MP3s for you, but it’s likely that you already have the answer installed on your iPhone or iPad.

That’s right. Apple’s own WorkFlow app can quickly and easily convert any audio (or video) file to MP3.

The MP3, the iconic music compressions format partly popularized by the iPod, has been declared dead by its creators.

Licensing of the technology has been the responsibility of German company the Fraunhofer Institute. In a statement, the institute revealed that it is terminating licensing patents and software related to MP3. It’s the end of an era!

This post is brought to you by Convertanymusic.com, maker of Apple Music Converter.

When we download music from iTunes, or audiobooks from Audible, the files that get onto our devices are DRM-protected. That means they can’t be played on “unauthorized” devices. This, let’s face it, is pretty inconvenient.

This post is brought to you by Digiarty, creator of MacX Video Converter Pro.

Sometimes you see a great video online and you’ve just got to have your very own copy. MacX YouTube Downloader, a free tool from Digiarty, can make that happen. And if you want to take things a little further, companion software MacX Video Converter Pro can transform the videos you’ve downloaded into files that will work on all your devices.

Possibly the best part? Digiarty is celebrating its fifth birthday in style this week by giving away MacX Video Converter Pro!

Amazon is reported to be in discussions with music labels to launch a streaming music service for its Amazon Prime subscription members. Will it be more like Spotify, or iTunes Radio, though?

Amazon has today launched a new web app for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows users to purchase more than 22 million tracks directly from the retail giant’s MP3 store. Amazon says the HTML5 app has been optimized to work seamlessly inside Apple’s mobile Safari browser, and any music you purchase will be transferred instantly to your Cloud Player library.

Amazon has today launched a new music service called AutoRip, which offers customers a free MP3 version of every album they’ve bought on CD from Amazon since 1998. The service currently boasts more than 50,000 digital albums from all the major record labels, and Amazon insists that new titles are added on a regular basis.