Vinyl records, radio, then analog tape, then CDs, now MP3s ~ what next? I’m just wondering in the future when someone refers to their “collection” if it will be anything that you will actually be able to see on a shelf. Maybe we’ll have “entertainment chips” embedded in our skulls at birth. As it is, I get almost all of my music online these days, so my collection is a bunch of files somewhere on my hard-drive. It’s so much easier and cheaper that way. Anyone else do most of your music shopping online? If so, what service do you use? Here’s the ones I’ve either used or am thinking about using;
BEST BUY's Digital Music Service ~ www.bestbuy.com/rhapsody
Press Play ~ http://www.pressplay.com/
i-Tunes ~ http://www.apple.com/itunes/ (I would have to get a Mac???)
Buymusic.com ~ http://www.buymusic.com/

No thoughts on this? Well, personally I'm of the opinion that these digital music services will eventually be the primary way that most people buy music. It's makes sense since the product itself (the music) is just a wave file anyway. Why drive to the store to wait in line for the listening stations? It's not like you're ordering paper towells or HAVE to go to the store because you're out of toilet paper. As for services that are out now, of the ones I've looked at, I think I'm leaning toward's the Best Buy one, called Rhapsody I think. They have over 375,000 tracks and the burn rate is 79 cents per track, which is 20 cents less than what I've seen the other ones charge. I used to hate online music downloading from the illegal ones, but subscription services like this are different because it's not like file-sharing where you have to sort through a ton of files for one song just to find the right version. You don't have to worry about viruses either, and the tracks are CD quality. Not to mention the fact that I'll never have to pay some nasty fine for music pirating. Anyway, that's my soapbox on that. If anyone has an opinion about this either way, I'd love to hear from ya.