This. MD was kind of a weird cross-over between a disk with a filesystem (which the iPod was in its first iterations) and a CD. And it sucked as both - it could

This. MD was kind of a weird cross-over between a disk with a filesystem (which the iPod was in its first iterations) and a CD. And it sucked as both - it could not be used as a file system because you had to use Sony's proprietary tools to get anything onto it and off of it, _and_ it sucked as as a CD because the only equipment that could get data off of it would do it either real-time (too slow) or - at best - at 4x realtime. That while CD-R reader drives already could read at 32x realtime. The DRM also had a nice property that you needed a proprietary Sony app to get music onto and off of a MD, this app was horrible _and_ it was only available for Windows. MDs did indeed stay in widespread use for professional sound recording where convenience was less important than reliability, they were quite reliable. This only turned around once flash storage started becoming fast and affordable.