Thankfully, there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction — Ogg. With Ogg, professional grade multimedia formats such as Vorbis, Theora, Opus and FLAC come to life!

Vorbis and Theora are used extensively by free software projects, artists and a growing number of music and video distributors.

News: in early 2017, the patent on MP3, an audio format competing with Ogg, expired.

Take the next steps

To play Ogg files you need a media player that understands these formats. Many different free software players work with Ogg. We like one called VLC Media Player. Follow our instructions to install VLC.

If you know of any sites that use Ogg Vorbis, Theora, Opus, or other free media formats, please submit them to campaigns@fsf.org for inclusion on the PlayOgg list.

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