Mpg123
Open source audio player
title: "Mpg123" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["free-audio-software", "audio-player-software-for-linux", "free-media-players", "linux-media-players", "free-software-primarily-written-in-assembly-language", "free-software-programmed-in-c", "c-(programming-language)-libraries"] description: "Open source audio player" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpg123" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Open source audio player ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | mpg123 |
| screenshot | mpg123.png |
| author | Michael Hipp, Oliver Fromme |
| developer | Thomas Orgis |
| released | before 1997-04-27 |
| latest release version | |
| latest release date | |
| latest preview version | |
| latest preview date | |
| programming language | C, Assembly |
| operating system | Unix-like, Windows |
| genre | Audio player |
| license | LGPL-2.1-only |
| website | |
| repo | |
| :: |
| name = mpg123 | screenshot = mpg123.png | author = Michael Hipp, Oliver Fromme | developer = Thomas Orgis | released = before 1997-04-27 | latest release version = | latest release date = | latest preview version = | latest preview date = | programming language = C, Assembly | operating system = Unix-like, Windows | genre = Audio player | license = LGPL-2.1-only | website = | repo =
mpg123 is a free and open-source audio player. It supports MPEG audio formats, including MP3.
As a console application, it has no graphical user interface.
mpg123's Assembly code is optimized with SIMD instructions to improve the performance of the iDCT part of the MPEG decoding.
mpg123's decoding library, libmpg123 is used by DeaDBeeF, Audacious, XMMS and Winamp (version 5.8) for MP3 playback and can be used in Winamp before version 5.8 via a plugin.
History
First known presence is in Debian GNU/Linux distribution, where it was submitted to repositories with version 0.59f on 27 April 1997 and it already had MP3 support ("MPEG layer 1/2/3 audio player"). The license for the last release (0.59r / 19 June 1999) from the original authors included restrictive (non-commercial, no-derivative) terms, although the source code was available. This led to the creation of mpg321, a similar program (based on MAD) licensed under the GPLv2.
Official development of mpg123 and its library mpglib stalled, and serious security holes emerged. Patches were applied downstream for packages provided by various Linux and BSD operating systems.
In 2006, a new maintainer started work towards the release of a new official mpg123 package. After several security rollup releases in the 0.6.x series, version 1.0 was released in 2007 under the LGPLv2.1, with libmpg123 as a replacement for mpglib.
References
References
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-changes/1997/04/msg00642.html
- (19 October 2018). "Winamp 5.8 Beta, Build 3660 (Official) - Winamp & Shoutcast Forums".
- "Otachan's in_!mpg123".
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-changes/1997/04/msg00642.html
- "About mpg321".
- "Mpg123: Download".
- "Mpg123 : Security vulnerabilities".
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::