Even if I just build a player which supports MP3 ?
Yes. Even if you just build a player which supports MP3.
I think the MP3 licence allows you to use it for free (as in beer) software but you have to buy a licence for it if you charge for it.
Nope. Even if you give your software away for free (beer or speech), you still have to pay a licensing fee.
Thought the mp3 license is pay for when you have more than 5000 downloads of the app if freeware and pay for in any case if not free
Only for games. Thomson
royalty rates are available on the Interweb. Current rate for a software application is 75 cents a copy, or a one time fee of 50.000 USD. For games it's 2.500, provided you distribute more than 5K copies.
OGG is definately the way to go if you plan on selling your game and don't want to get hosed on the audio component..
Ogg/Vorbis is definately the way to go regardless. MP3 royalties are not restricted to commercial products. If you make a small "proof of concept" game using MP3 sounds, upload it to your website, and just sit around and wait, doing nothing at all, by the time 5.000 webcrawlers have indexed the file, you in principle owe Thomspon 2.500 USD in royalties.
And they say patents encourage innovation.