Digital Music On The Street

{mosgoogle}Before MP3s, there was the Sony Walkman and its imitators; cassette, CD and mini-disc. Digital music has had its greatest impact in this portable music space.

Digital music players hold up to 15,000 songs on the largest capacity iPod. The players are smaller and lighter than CD or cassette players - the smallest fit on a key chain. And most play for hours without wearing out batteries. The new Sony 100 series Network Walkman models, for example, play continuously for 70 hours on a single AAA battery.

This synergy between digital music, the PC and portable devices is fundamentally changing the way people, especially young people, listen to music. They can listen wherever they go now.

Apple may not have been first with a portable digital music player, but it has defined the category. The secret to iPod's success? A lot of it is the subtle simplicity of the player - the thing just works. The free iTunes software make it easy to record music from CDs to PC or Mac, organize it into play list and transfer it to an iPod. The iPod also features a brilliantly simple click wheel user interface and terrific sound.

While it is enormously popular, iPods is just the tip of the portable music playing iceberg. Companies such as Creative Labs, iRiver, RCA and Sony are giving Apple a run for its money Sony in particular has learned from Apple the importance of the way music players look. A lot of users, especially young users, see these products as a way to express their uniqueness, to identify themselves. The company's latest 500 series digital Walkman products are about the length of a lipstick tube and just a quarter-inch thick. They come in a range of liquid metallic colors and feature organic electro-luminance technology for the brightest possible display.