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Since the MediaPlayer class falls so short to provide decent performance to stream Internet radio, i am forced to look at all alternatives.

One of these is the AACDECODER-ANDROID https://code.google.com/p/aacdecoder-android/ project. It works perfectly for what i need! my streams play with less than a second buffer time.

Their website states that:

PLEASE NOTE that the use of this software may require the payment of patent royalties. You need to consider this issue before you start building derivative works. We are not warranting or indemnifying you in any way for patent royalities! YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS!

In the linked page about licensing FAQ if says:

The license encompasses MPEG-2 AAC LC (including MPEG-2 AAC LC in combination with SBR), MPEG-4 AAC LC, MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC (or HE AAC, also sometimes known as aacPlus), and MPEG-4 HE AAC v2. Also included in the license are patents essential to the MPEG-4 Low Delay AAC Profile, MPEG-4 ER AAC Scalable, MPEG-4 ER AAC ELD and AAC-ELD v2. The license provides comprehensive coverage of those aspects of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC in commercial practice.

This would suggest that somehow if the library is used to play only mp3 streams, there is no need to license the library?

Im looking for someone with experience using this library, who can shed some light into this question.

Thanks/

Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez
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1 Answers1

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Answering my own question.

After contacting technicolor.com, the company who ended up as being responsible for enforcement of mp3 patents, it seems that using this library for mp3 playback requires a one time license payment. The license seems to be only applicable after 5,000 units. The patent costs $2,500 per platform (decode only, up to 100k units).

Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez
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  • I have some question about this topic too. Did you end up using this library? So if I stream mp3 files using this library, I have to pay the license? – Hanny Udayana Oct 28 '14 at 13:47
  • They (technicolor) asked for patent money so we didn't use it. I havent tried it but this other library looks promising https://code.google.com/p/android-openmxplayer/ – Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez Nov 13 '14 at 16:00