This is very serious. MP3 is a very special compressor. It uses data from studies of the human brain audial centres and the human ear to select which parts of the sample should be dropped for maximum compression, and most people won't even notice the bits that are missing. Unless you're not human, that is.
So its very unlikely there will be a free or open source algorithm even as remotely good as mp3. Not even ogg vorbis. So I wouldn't state vorbis as being an instant fix, more of yet another open source solution destined for parallel - if lesser - use. Remember PNG?
