The Music Web FAQ

Just what is a file format?

A file format, according to Wikipedia, “is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file.” Computers can only store information in binary form, which means that some way is needed for converting useful information into and from binary. 

The best way to do this depends on what is being encoded, which is why there are different formats for music, documents, and video games. And even for the same sort of media being encoded (say, audio) there are different file formats, depending on the programs used. 

For example, MP3’s are one format for songs, and waveform files are another. You can identify all file formats by their three letter extensions: MP3 files all end in “.mp3”, waveform files in end “.wav”, files created with Microsoft Word end in “.doc” etc. For a complete listing of all file formats, visit WhatIs.com’s “Every File Format in the World:” http://whatis.techtarget.com/fileFormatM/0,289951,sid9,00.html

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