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Do you remember when music was distributed on vinyl? Record albums
were prone to damage and dust, and they were too large to be truly por-
table. Plus, you couldn’t possibly listen to them in the car. The first major
improvement to that format to gain wide acceptance was the cassette tape,
but those had their limitations as well. They were susceptible to environ-
mental hazards, like heat, and eventually wore out through continued use.
They also eliminated the random-access feature that vinyl provided. Then
along came compact discs. CDs were still in danger of damage from scratch-
es, but to a much lesser degree than vinyl. The format took off because of
the convenient form factor and random-access features. But of course it
would be only a matter of time before improvements in distribution formats
made CDs inconvenient or unnecessary, if not obsolete.
These days, few true geeks are listening to music that hasn’t been digitized
for use with a computer or portable device. You’ve probably already ripped
your entire CD collection. Perhaps you’ve been downloading music from the
Internet, either using a peer-to-peer system like Kazaa (Gnutella, Napster,
WinMX, etc.) or one of the legal online music outlets like iTunes or eMusic
(or again, to our surprise, Napster). You’ve probably enjoyed the benefits of
having an entire music collection accessible from a computer-bas ...