The wonderful land of Ogg

Hello Bloggie:

I have a question in respects to music files on a website. I have an MP3 song which I would to incorporate on one of my webpages and was wondering  to which format I should convert it for it to be the smallest. I know midi files are small but this is a song by an artist and it is 2.82MB right
now.

I can add it to my page but I am afraid it might be too big. Is there a format that would make it smaller yet still play properly on my webpage?

Thanks

Signed
Francine the Grand Explorer

Dear Francine:

Ogg.

Excuse me, I hear you cry?
Ogg. The answer to your question is Ogg. Ogg is a patent free, multimedia bitstream container that can handle audio or video.
Since you are using MP3, you already have a codec that accepts some loss of signal quality. It's lossy, in other words. That train has left the station, so why not look at Ogg?
You can tell a file compressed using an Ogg codec because it has the file
extension .ogg.

Vorbis offers Ogg codecs for a range of operating systems. Vorbis hosts a list of third party software using its codec. Here is their FAQ or, if you prefer, the developer version. They claim superior performance to MP3 or the Windows Media Player, but your mileage will vary.
Now I do take your criticism about the file size seriously as well, and fortunately many companies have been working on improvements to codecs that will decrease file size. I interviewed one such gentleman, Richard Wigard, recently for another blog and, while he will have a proprietary solution, he hopes to get it to market next year.
Good luck.
Bloggie