Working with SoundManager 2 right now, and making a music player where all of the real work is happening in HTML, CSS and Javascript, it seems to me there’s the beginning is a viable future where the audio formats become like JPG, GIF and PNG.

In other words, the format cease to dictate the user experience, and instead is simply chosen based its fidelity for a particular use.

Of course, like with the 1990s fears around the GIF patents, right now on the web we need alternatives to MP3 Apple Lossless such that we can work with web audio free of any patent threats and such that even proprietary players have an incentive to properly support free formats like Vorbis and Flac.