• by Paul Gough , January 7, 2004

I knew there was a reason why I didn't ask for the glitzy new MP3 player for Christmas.

Apple helped spark the portable music revolution with its ground-breaking iPOD, once limited to Mac users and now available to the rest of us Windows users. Now it's made another bold move, announcing at the Macworld expo yesterday that it would offer a cut-rate iPod.

A cut-rate iPod, that is. This new model, the iPod mini, would list at $249, only $50 cheaper than the next-nearest full-scale unit. But it's smaller -- about the size of a business card - and has only 4 GB storage, meaning it will hold many fewer songs than the full-scale iPod that carries about 15 GB of music. The rumor mill, while getting right the fact that the mini would be introduced, was far off the mark in price. Some whispers predicted this model would sell for as low as $100.

The iPod mini still costs more than the flash-memory MP3 players you can get at the local Wal-Mart or Circuit City for $100 or less, or my beloved Sony Mini Disc. But I think the introduction of the mini will put the iPod in the hands of even more people, although Apple has certainly done better in market share with portable players (30 percent of the market) than what it's gotten against the PC. It could spark a price war for the middle range MP3 players.

It's also going to be the beginning of the end of the portable CD player. As (legal) online music sources start to gain more traction - iTunes, Listen/Rhapsody and the new Napster, among many others - there's really going to be little reason to own a CD player. You buy a CD and convert it to MP3 format, or you go online and buy tracks or whole albums, and then you move the songs you want back and forth between the computer and the portable player. You don't ever worry about carrying a load of CDs ever again. And the device itself is much smaller than a CD player and lasts much longer on batteries. Mine, for instance, lasts upward of 50 hours on one AA battery.

The distribution of legal music is a great opportunity for the Web. While I still buy CDs, I'm increasingly listening to music on the Web - via a subscription to a legal online service - and then buy and download the tracks that I want. It works wonderfully, it's completely legal, and everyone's happy. The record industry and the artists get their money, I get the music I want, and I don't ever have to wonder whether the album that I just bought has only one good tune and 10 or 12 ones I don't want.

Certainly the iTunes Website has made money, too. In his Macworld address yesterday, co-founder Steve Jobs said they've sold 30 million tracks and a phenomenal market share. That's only going to increase as more people understand that they can have digital music without breaking the law.

And that's a good thing.

-- Paul J. Gough