What is the m4a file format?
What does M4A stand for? Many people have questions about M4A, since it is relatively new. M4A stands for MPEG 4 Audio, and it is a popular file extension used to represent audio files. Most people are familiar with MP3 and how it shrinks down the file size of songs and other audio files. M4A and MP4 do the same thing as MP3 does, but even better. Quality is better and file sizes are usually smaller than MP3 files. But unlike MP3, no licenses or payments are required to be able to stream or distribute content in M4A format (unlike MP3 which requires you to pay royalties on content you distribute in MP3 format). This fact alone, is more than enough reason (due to the extreme cost savings) to use M4A files instead of MP3 files. In addition, M4A files tend to sound much better than MP3 files encoded at the same bitrate. What is the difference between M4A and MP4 files? I am a bit confused. This is the most popular question we get and seems to cause the most confusion to people new to MPEG
