Back when I was an undergrad (1996-2000), my roommate was really big on mp3's. He was all excited by the fact that he could get "CD-quality music" for free. Flash forward to today, when mp3's aren't a novelty, but a way of life: an issue of contention between the public and the music industry.
Now that mp3's are firmly entrenched in the public's mindset, a different entry into the digital music domain has arrived: ogg vorbis. My initial reaction to another way to compress audio data was disgust. Did we really need another one? Mp3's were good enough: I don't know why Microsoft thought anyone would want to use wma's. Honestly though, my reluctance to embrace ogg vorbis may have come from a shallower reaction: the name 'ogg vorbis' itself. Surely a musical compression algorhythm should have a name that is reflective of its utility? Ogg vorbis doesn't sound cool and rebellious, or proffer a sterile named after its function acronym. It has to be the least melliflous name every conceived (the "gv" sound is a definite sticking point) and yet somehow I am supposed to entrust my music files to something with a bad sounding name?
But as I bulked up my computer with free software, I also became aware of ogg vorbis. After doing some quick online research, this is the advice I have to give.
Use mp3: if you are a band selling your music. Most people have mp3 players, and they've heard of that format. Your public might not be able use ogg in their minidisc players, and they might pass you over if they don't know anything about the format. They might instead opt for the familiar mp3 and skip over anything that isn't what they expect. Use ogg vorbis: If you are a computer programmer. Then you get to use it for free (I was disgusted when I learned mp3 company decided to charge EVERYBODY who wanted to use it) and the public will probably never know that you're not using mp3. Also, ogg was designed to sound better for smaller sizes, so it's great for fast web downloading and humnogous games. Lastly, I would advise against the often qutoed advice of: "use whichever format sounds better to you." I'm a musician, not a recording engineer, so I wouldn't really have an opinion on which sounds better. (They'd both sound "pretty much the same" to me.) And 98% of the population won't notice either. That same 98% of the poplulation will notice if you're using a "name brand" or if you've saved them a minute of processing time. Also "sounds good" is highly subjective: you might swear it sounds better as an mp3, but your fans might prefer it as an ogg file. The only way to know for sure is to do some statistics after asking a random selection of fans which they prefer (and most will have no preference, making this analysis very difficult). Finally, remember that "sounds good" is reflective of "sounds like it _should_." People say that digital sound has lost the "warmth" of tapes not because tapes sound better, but because tapes are flawed in recording: they tend to compress, which makes it sound "warmer" but also more inaccurate. So just like people got used to tapes, so have people gotten used to mp3.