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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 ...