The party line is this: Because that was too hard for consumers. For the technically inclined, keeping track of mp3's has been relatively simple. For everyone e

The party line is this: Because that was too hard for consumers. For the technically inclined, keeping track of mp3's has been relatively simple. For everyone else it is hard. Songs get skewed across the file system, and some people simply do not understand the process of attaching a USB device and dragging songs onto it. iTunes and Zune make it much easier for the average consumer to manage a library of music.