Future of CD's - Hard drive based music

don't get me wrong, I love my ipod as the most convenient music-on-the-go source. I doubt i'll ever get rid of or stop buying cds though for several reasons: listening to them in the car, sound quality, and i like browsing for them at the store and discovering new music. Also, I agree with others that there is something to be said about holding the jacket in hand to see what the artist had in mind for the presentation of their music. Hard drive based music is just another alternative option for getting the music to my ear.

Jrun & Gibson58: Hard-drives are not new technology, and today they are inexpensive and getting more so -- they are also easy to configure for reliabity and security (RAID arrays and the like) . Computers are hardly new either (older than CD players I believe).

iPods can be used in car audio systems very easily and AUX jacks are becoming standard in cars.

No one is saying you have to sell your CD's. I can understand the discomfort, it is more an issue of comfort and how you like to interact with your music. Since I made the change I have listened to more parts my collection than ever, and been buying more music, worrying less about the gear.

Jaybo, To add to what you said--Many times those who just download one song from a CD miss some real jems. I recently bought a CD (the actual physical disc) because one song grabbed me. Then I discovered another song on the CD that I liked even more after hearing it on my system and I have grown fond of the entire disc.

I copied the disc to my music server and safely stored the disc because I plan to live for a long time and expect to need it again.

Thymanst-Agreed. I bought a good DAC because I wanted to get into PC-based audio. I also got a CD/SACD transport, because we still can't rip SACDs. If Sony ever allows DSD to be ripped to hard drive, I will probably ditch the transport. (EmmLabs CDSD transport and DCC2 DAC).

Jrun-There is ~100% chance a drive will fail. One solution is to backup music or the entire system to an external hard drive and just put the hard drive away in case you need it. So, if the computer fails, you can plug in the external drive and restore the system, including music (Acronis TruImage lets you do this with USB drives.) Another more expensive solution is to use a RAID-5 array--when one of the drives fails, it is rebuilt from the other drives.

Gibson58 I agree with you about the graphics the arstist intended for his music, but in the computer you can download a file or go the the artist web page and see a whole graphic presentation.

I think in the near future, music will be downloaded from the groups own website, we will listen to internet radio and from there link to the groups site, independent internet radio stations will pop up from the most wierd music to the most "gourmet" music, we will exchange links to radio stations and from there link to the arstist own site, maybe even chat a little with them....
Bye bye record labels!!!
Artists can actually play in digital and record everything. We will be able to download jam sessions and new releases...unplugged versions uploaded this afternoon!!!

That being said I like the quality of my transport better than computer based still.