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Big Demand for Digital Music Players

Posted by samzenpus on from the music-on-the-go dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Market research company IDC is predicting a rosy future for MP3 player sales. They predict that by 2008 it will grow into a $58 billion industry - four times bigger than the US record industry. Also in the news, Sony will finally start making a digital music portable that plays MP3s. Their present players only read their proprietary ATRAC3 format, forcing you to transcode any MP3 files you want to play on them."

8 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. I predict... by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Funny


    that by 2008, none of the recording companies will allow me to purchase an MP3 in a store.

  2. Sony MP3 Player!!! by jgerry · · Score: 4, Funny

    About bloody time. Sony's portable music players (even their new hard-drive player) are a joke.

    It takes a special kind of asshat to make a portable music player with no MP3 support.

    Sony, welcome to 1999!!!

    1. Re:Sony MP3 Player!!! by Ravensign · · Score: 2, Funny

      The funny things is, Sony is so huge and monolithic, this decision probably WAS made in 1999 -- it just took 5 years to get through the meetings and memos down to the public.

      --
      "Sig free in '03!"
  3. so what you're saying is... by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Funny

    40 gigs ought to be good enough for anyone?

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  4. Re:Makes sense... by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Funny

    I mean, once you have a 40 gig player, I can't imagine needing much more.

    Yeah, I said that with my 540 meg harddrive, my 1 Gig harddrive, my 4 Gig harddrive, my 20 Gig harddrive, my 80 Gig harddrive. Once I get my 1/2 terabyte RAID5 music server, I can't imagine needing much more.

  5. Re:I'm glad the title says "Digial Music Player" by tool462 · · Score: 5, Funny

    MP3 is the new "Kleenex".

    "Hey, what MP3 format do you use?"
    "FLAC"
    "Cool. I use WMA."

  6. Re:They already do... by gordgekko · · Score: 3, Funny

    > What's not digital about CD?

    Apple had nothing to do with making them more popular.

    --
    You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
  7. Re:iPod=loose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Spoken like a true Apple-zealot.