Dear Mrs. Sammy,

Am not same like you either. I don't sell hot items on Engadget.

Sincerely,
Mr. Sammy

Seriously, Engadget...you guys might wanna rethink your stance on MD. You are knowledgeable about so many products, but for some reason not MD. And it almost seems like you have a fear of it! 'Sup wi'dat? Seriously, try one out sometime before you bash them anymore.

HiMD really is an incredible technology. Has a lot more to offer than most music players today. And runs on almost NO power. It just didn't win the popularity contest because Stevie J. never put his name on it. Anyone who can't even be bothered to put a replaceable battery in a device is up to no good if you ask me.

I really like MD. I wish so much that CD would have died instead. I know hardly anyone has actually used one. But once you have, you would wonder why anyone would want to use CD. MD is soooo much more convenient, portable, comfortable to hold, not delicate, and they have been recordable for eons. Plus there has been something built into the decoding algorithm in Sony MD players for years that greatly enhances the sound quality over just CD. Gives it a depth that CD's don't have....even compressed!

And you can record on them the same way you could with good old cassette tapes, randomly. You didn't have to use special software that wrote links back to the previous session on the disc to bring all of it forward to the new session everytime you wanted to add a song to an existing disc. Or even worse..."close out" the disc like you do with most normal CD-players that aren't brand new. MD was just the bomb. In fact, the only reason I switched to a Zen Micro was because I accidentally dropped my MD in a bunch of soapy water (bummer). Otherwise, that thing was indestructable. And limitless storage for super cheap.

So now I have a Zen and love it, but still reminisce about the MD. I guess people just tend to go with whatever the crowd says is best (which could cause me to segue into the iTunes vs. PlaysForSure argument...but not today!!)

-Daniel

Mememememe!!

Me please!

I think this debate is really all about the future. In general the world is moving away from so much "mine, mine, mine", as Carl eloquently put it in his post above, and more to a collective body of knowledge and art that we all share. It seems silly for each person to constantly pay a separate steep fee for content in order to claim that you "own" the work for a given number of years until the next format war comes along. Only the artists actually OWN the work. This way we are sharing, instead of claiming.

And as far as the math goes, whether you are downloading or buying a CD, it's roughly 79-99 cents a song or more. To put 10,000 songs on your iPod this way is around $10,000. Do you know how many years and how much music I could have enjoyed for ~$80 a year via subscription? About 100 years. And are you really going to enjoy the exact same music collection for more than a few months anyway?

Something no one is mentioning here is that models like iTunes and the iPod are actually fueling more illegal downloads. People gotta fill up those 60 GB iPods one way or another!!

You're right, Jon. Our "shitty services bites". We really should blame ourselves!!

Chris,

I see your point. However, the thing about subscription services is that you DON'T have to keep a hard drive (or MP3 player) full of music that you may or may not listen to. If you get tired of something, you are free to just trash it. And it may be that years later, you hear some part of that album again and want to listen to it. You are free to just play it online or download it again. It's really no different than Internet access. You don't store a copy of every single web page you like in case you ever have to shut off your ISP connection do you? Plus, it's only $10 a month dude! Come on.

As far as your "DRM free" iTunes music, it's DRM free because you burned it to a CD-RW and then ripped it back in again...am I not correct? You probably have an RW specifically for that purpose and have to go through that each time you buy something new. That's a lot of work to ensure you don't accidentally lose your licensed copy in the future.

Also, if hard times fall on me and I need to suspend my music subscriptions, I will most likely continue to purchase CDs from time to time. That's reality. We don't just completely stop purchasing music during our lives, with or without subscription programs.

For me, it's worth it to have the freedom to really explore a lot of artists that I would NEVER risk the money on in a store or iTunes. I've found some really cool obscure music this way.

As far as the argument about subscription members never actually "owning" their music. Guess what, NONE of us ever actually own another artist's music. We just pay $16 or whatever to own a disc with a copy of it for a while, until either we lose the disc, damage it, or CDs become completely obsolete.

And do you really want to have to keep all the media you've ever purchased in your life in some massive bookcase somewhere just to be able to reload your iPod or whatever with it later on? No thanks. I would rather be a lifetime member of some service, just the way we all are with cable and our ISPs, and have instant access to an entire library of music available to me at any time, depending on what I am in the mood to hear. Pretty soon, all of our cell phones are going to be UMPCs and we're going to want infinite music selection with us. And iTunes users definitely never OWN the music they buy at 99 cents a pop. It's DRM'd out the wazoo. And they sure as heck better not ever reformat or buy a new PC and forget to back it all up.

And yes, I can download a lot of music a month. Once you become a subscription member, you understand. It's a journey of exploration that you begin. One song leads to another, to another, and so on... Lots of fun.

The whole subscription model just absolutely rocks (at least as far as legal downloading goes). I really hope MS develops a good subscription front end and music device of its own. If Apple would get on the subscription bandwagon I would probably buy an iPod. It's the only thing keeping me from doing so.

It's funny when I hear my friends who have iTunes talking about how they downloaded this song or that song for 99c each. And I'm sitting there going, "If you like those tracks, you should hear the rest of the album... Oh that's right, you can't afford to!"