Big Demand for Digital Music Players

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."

Comments

I'm glad the title says "Digial Music Player"

[Sean Starkey]

Everytime I hear "MP3 Player", I cringe...

I have a Neuros and its far from just an "MP3 Player". My Neuros plays MP3's, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and even the dreadful WMA files...

I hate when people call it an "MP3 Player".

<shameless plug>

If you haven't looked the Neuros, you don't know what you are missing. It's the perfect player for the geek in you. Recently they have open sourced the Firmware, allowing us hackers to have our way with it.

</shameless plug>

Re:I'm glad the title says "Digial Music Player"

[tool462]

MP3 is the new "Kleenex".

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

Re:Mainstream

[e9th]

I think the CD made it mainstream.

Not Too Big

[Tony]

Alla' you "It's Too Big" whiners are missing several important points about the Neuros:

• Ogg Support
  
• FM Broadcasting built in
  
• Just a USB mass storage device
  
• Regular 2.5" hard drive (cheap upgrades!)
  
• Open Source, bay-bee!
  
• Fan-fucking-tastic customer support
  
• Modular, so you can have backpacks with different genres of music
  
• Not as expensive as the iPod

There are other reasons to favor the Neuros over the iPod, but those are the big ones.

But, as for everything, personal preferences play a huge role in your selection of a personal music device (PMD).