If MediaMonkey is freeware, why isn’t MP3 encoding unlimited?

The philosophy behind MediaMonkey has been to ensure that the Free version of MediaMonkey has all of the functionality that would be required by the average user, and that satisfied users or more advanced users will upgrade to the Gold version for more advanced functionality. The one exception to this philosophy is that MP3 encoding limitations.

In MediaMonkey 5, you do have unlimited MP3 encoding, but changing the encoding settings for MP3 is a Gold feature. In MediaMonkey 4, MP3 encoding expires after 30 days in the free version. All versions of MediaMonkey have unlimited decoding (playback) of MP3 files.

The historical reason for this is that MP3 was patented and had license fees associated with it, and to avoid such fees, MP3 encoding was limited to 30 days in the free version. As of 2017 MP3 patents are considered to have expired, but MediaMonkey has continued to include MP3 encoding as a Gold feature.

If you’d like to work around this for MediaMonkey 4, the free LAME MP3 encoder is available in a variety of locations on the internet, and users can install LAME for MP3 encoding if they wish to avoid upgrading to the Gold version of MediaMonkey 4.

Applies to: ,

Was this article helpful?