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MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented in 1987 by the "Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits" in Erlangen, Germany.
It was designed to greatly reduce the amount of data (10:1 compression is common) required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. In popular usage, "MP3" also refers to files of sound or music recordings stored in the MP3 format on computers.
The name is derived from "MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3," more formally known as "MPEG-1 Part 3 Layer 3" or "ISO/IEC 11172-3 Layer 3". Reportedly, the ".mp3" filename extension is also sometimes used on audio files encoded using the newer "MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3" standard (a.k.a. "MPEG-2 Part 3 Layer 3" or "ISO/IEC 13818-3 Layer 3").
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