Troutman said:
There will always be a pre-recorded medium for Jazz and Classical music, and for anything else that wants to be released in an audiophile format. It may not be released as CDs, some other format may have taken their place (pre-recorded SD Cards?) but it will be in a format where there is control over the quality of the recording. Also, can you imagine downloading Wagner's Ring Cycle? Even with broadband, that would take a chunk of time and a significant amount of room on your hard drive.
The ability to shop from home is already a proven success and major hurtin to retailers since websites and channels like Amazon and HSN started popping up. The fact you can download even huge MP3 files (100mb) 20 minutes still beats having to fight traffic and fellow shoppers and waiting in lines to purchase something you can have in a few minutes or so. Not to mention you don't have to worry if the store just sold the last copy of Wagner 15 minutes before you walked in.
And from the start I said the downloading business will never the best access to music until the quality of the downloads (compression, bit-rates etc...)improve and match that of a CD.
They also now make 10 and 20 gig iPods.... I think everything Wagner ever wrote will fit on one of those iPods.