If I get one more e-mail defending physical formats, I’m gonna throw my typewriter through the window.  Or maybe my Walkman!

Please, no more prognostications from those who haven’t experienced the future.  You remind me of my mother, who pooh-poohed the family friend who bought a personal computer in the eighties, lamenting he didn’t spend the cash on a better automobile, and now checks her e-mail each and every day via her Mac.

You didn’t know you needed HDTV until you saw it.  You won’t know you need streaming until you properly experience it.  MySpace and other Websites give you a facsimile.  If you’re good at Google you can ferret through Websites looking for the track you want to hear, which will be rendered in awful quality and will be hamstrung by bad code.  This is like driving cross-country in a Jeep.  But with a Mercedes-Benz and a smooth highway and satellite radio you might be eager to take that long ride.

Apple made online music palatable for the masses.  There were two factors…  The iPod and iTunes.  Suddenly, you didn’t need to know what an MP3 was, nor tags.  It was just like going to the record store, but you didn’t have to leave your house and you got to purchase exactly what you wanted, with no bloat-tunes.  Until now, streaming services have been akin to the original Rio MP3 player and the matching software that didn’t sync automatically and transferred tracks at a glacial pace.  Rhapsody has a bad interface.  I’ve never even used Napster’s.  To my knowledge, neither has an application that functions on a Mac.  But now I use both services, because of the Sonos iPhone app.

I didn’t used to use my Sonos system either.  The hand-held controller was frustrating, access to music was too slow!  But the iPhone app is intuitive and almost instant.  I can dial up the history of recorded music throughout my house without awakening my computer, Rhapsody and Napster come straight from the pipe!

If you used Spotify, you’d get the magic.  Because Spotify mimics the iTunes software.  And you can listen to your desired tunes faster than Apple can download them.  The elegance and convenience deliver a rewarding experience.  Prior to the iPhone/Sonos solution and Spotify, the software wasn’t ready, the experience sucked.  Which may be why only a couple of million people pay to stream in the U.S.

Unfortunately, Napster’s new deal does not come with new software.  You’ve got to utilize the browser on your Mac to stream.  That’s like crossing the street wading in molasses.  So, I don’t believe Napster will set streaming on fire.  But as soon as there’s an easily-used, elegant solution, akin to Spotify, streaming will go bonkers.

So don’t tell me about your CDs, don’t tell me about the way it used to be.  To pontificate about streaming without truly experiencing it is to proffer an uninformed, ancient opinion.  You’ve got to get Spotify or Sonos/iPhone in order to know what’s truly going on.  That’s the way it works in tech. Rather than dismiss the future, you’ve got to check it out.  The original Napster may have been mass copyright infringement, but what a service! The history of recorded music at your fingertips!

Unlike the Napster of yore, the new streaming services are legal.  It’s just a matter of tweaking them and exposing them until the public embraces them.  Will physical formats still exist?  Of course, you can still buy phonograph needles, you can still buy cassettes, but neither are mainstream formats, vinyl is barely a sideshow.

So, if you enjoy your CDs, fine.  But don’t tell me they’re going to rule in the future.  The industry would kill them tomorrow if they could figure out how to make this online thing pay.  They don’t want the manufacturing, shipping and returns.  Sure, they want to sell ten tracks instead of one.  But people have moved on.  Proven by the endless closure of physical retail outlets.  Still, the future will arrive, no matter what the labels say, because you can’t keep the public back, not forever, once they’ve experienced a better way.

The future is all your music at your fingertips all the time.  If you pay at all, whether it be cash or enduring advertisements, it will be for access. Why worry if you brought a certain track on vacation if you know it will be available instantly, anywhere?

The major labels could have charged for P2P transfers for the last decade.  Instead, they wanted to eradicate the technology.  They haven’t been successful and they’ve left all that money on the table.  But that ship has sailed.  License P2P now, because it’s dying.  Tech is a story of evolution. Constant and fast, a la Moore’s Law.  If you think CDs are perfect, that physical will still rule, then you’re reading this on an Apple II, an original IBM PC.  But you’re not.  You’ve seen the advantages of the future.  And it’s so bright, we’ve got to wear shades!