Interesting – did the original patents for MP3 not apply to streaming formats at all then? That would imply streaming MP3 data has been free for much longer than the “mp3 file format” itself. Would not suprise me if true, as the originators probably did not foresee the huge increase in internet bandwidth available to regular people, nor the concept of the streaming industry in general.

It’s also because we have better codecs like Opus. You’re probably streaming Opus on YouTube along with many other sites.