Good for them. That the music industry is finally accepting and legitizing downloadable music is terrific. However, it is truly a great crime that they fought it for 7 or 8 years. They could have been pioneers and heroes but instead they antagionized and sued us. Every single exec from the record labels should be tarred and fired for their shortsightedness. That shit wouldn't play across the stock market. Unless of course you are Mike Eisner & Disney.

Talk about running a company into the ground, Eisner should have been picked to replace Hillary Rosen.

MP3 was a new technology 7 or 8 years ago. I think shopping for music on the net was a long and drawn out process because they needed to put together the numbers for download cost, file types to offer (mp3, mp4, wma, etc), royalties per song, and potential vendors. They also needed to shut out most of the "free" competition before launching the internet enterprises. Why would you pay 99 cents a song when you could flip on Napster and get it for free? Some sort of guidelines needed to be put into place.

I think it's pretty wonderful that this online market is going global. It's also nice to see Steve Jobs at the top of his game.

for high volume music consumers, 99 cents per song is still absurdly expensive, which is why the subscription, all you can eat model makes more sense, but renting rather than owning has problems of its own. As a result, I don't do any of it yet.

At a bar & grill I frequent they have a jukebox that can scan a network and download music. Problem is, in order to play a song not downloaded to the machine, you have to pay a dollar. For spur of the moment, four beers down, music decisions, a dollar isn't much. For a whole album, however, I'd still rather pay the 15 dollars (there are so many places to purchase music, even estimating 15 dollars an album seems an exaggeration) and get the liner notes plus a tangible disc. I can also listen to it whenever I want.

My CD collection surpassed 500 discs a while back. I'm still too poor for an Ipod, and with computers needing to be replaced every five years, it just doesn't seem logical to house a collection on my desktop.

I understand that the market needs to move forward. It's sad, however, that a whole generation is going to miss out on saving money for that one cd you really want.

Mr. B: store your mp3s on a separate hard drive and you'll never have to worry about it. Remove the drive from your old computer, install it on the new one, and you're right back where you were with your old one.

I think something a lot of us who really love music forget is that, for most kids, most of the CDs they buy are filler. Most of the music-buying public have rarely known a "great album," they just know great songs from subpar albums. That's the norm to them. Rest assured that albums will not go away - there will always be artists who create albums of music because that's an art in itself. Itunes and its ilk frees single-minded artists like most of what's on the radio from the burden of creating filler.

As for your hesitance on the Ipod, let me speak from the POV of a used-to-be hater: the Ipod is the most rewarding technology investment I've ever made. I've got around 2000 CDs and can't possible bring enough with me when I go places to accomodate my tastes, but my 40gb Ipod can store nearly 1/4 of those - which is more than I really should need, actually. Whatever mood strikes me, I have something with me all the time that will likely suffice. The Ipod is a wonderful thing and has made listening to music a brand new, incredibly fun experience. You won't regret making the sacrifice to get one.

It's actually less than 99 cents a song if you get the whole album -- for example, if the album has more than 20 tracks, it's under 50 cents.

Still, no matter how you slice it, this is a much cheaper method than buying physical CDs, either if you get the whole album (10 bucks) or just the few songs you wanted (a couple of bucks).

unless you get the CDs free or buy them used (from $.50 to $10)

Just for the record, I'm not an Ipod hater. I really want one. It's just that 300-400 dollars isn't a feasible expense for me at the moment.

Once I can allow the funds to go to that luxury, though, it's in my hands.

I browsed the iTMS' Chinese selection the other night (it's hidden under "World" for those who can't find it). It's a good start, but my wife is mildly miffed that the initial selection is relatively small at the moment -- most of the performers only had one CD each. And browsing Chinese songs by their Roman names was a bit odd as well.

Still, she found five tracks she liked, so it's not a total loss. Now all I need is to get a few more free tracks from those Pepsi caps...

--R.J.

mrbenning writes:

"It's also nice to see Steve Jobs at the top of his game."

Reply: Two absolute genuises, in totally different ways, are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison - total opposites.

I agree; Jobs' turn around of Apple is nothing short of astounding.