I grew up in the 70's and 80's, and the first music I ever bought was on cassettes. Fortunately CD's came out when I was in middle school, so I was buying CDs w

I grew up in the 70's and 80's, and the first music I ever bought was on cassettes. Fortunately CD's came out when I was in middle school, so I was buying CDs when I really started building my own music collection. I remember filling my shelves with CD cases, and I remember noticing that I wasn't listening to my full range of music because of the friction of having to switch physical discs. Then my friend and I each bought a 400-disc carousel player [0]. That thing was magical - suddenly we could listen to any song we had ever bought at the press of a few buttons. I remember using Access to make a database of all my music, so I could easily listen to anything I wanted to. Around 2006 I bought a 30GB ipod, and I methodically ripped every CD in the 400-disc changer, which I had completely filled. I remember writing to my friend and telling him that every song in that changer was now in my pocket. It was another revolution in making all my music available with even less friction. Fast forward to today, and what do I have? I'm still listening to music on my 2006 ipod. I'm stuck there because I don't use itunes anymore, but my old ipod still works. I haven't made the time to update my approach to organizing music. I had a dream just last night that my ipod burned up, and I had to figure out a new way to listen to music. I'll dedicate some time in the next year or two to organize my music outside of itunes. I still have all my old CDs, so I could rip them again if there's reason to do so. Music has been changing formats for the last 100+ years. It's a bit of work to keep up with the changing formats, but I am always grateful that we have easy access to our entire collection of music at the touch of a few buttons. Edit: I also lived in NYC in the 90's, and I miss going to Tower Records and HMV and getting lost in there for hours at a time. [0] http://content.abt.com/image.php/big_cdpcx455.jpg?image=/images/products/BDP_Images/big_cdpcx455.jpg&canvas=1&quality=100&min_w=450&min_h=320&ck=334 http://content.abt.com/image.php/big_cdpcx455.jpg?image=/ima...