Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is an audio compression codec primarily authored by Josh Coalson. FLAC employs a lossless data compression algorithm and uses the extension .flac. FLAC is an open and royalty-free format with a free software implementation made available. FLAC has support for tagging, cover art, and fast seeking. Though FLAC playback support in portable audio devices and dedicated audio systems is limited compared to formats like MP3[3] or uncompressed PCM, FLAC is supported by more hardware devices than competing lossless compressed formats like WavPack.