h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I consider digital music a convenience, but not necessarily a boost to the quality of music.

My approach is a Creative Labs MP3/WMA player, a portable CD player that plays MP3's, an old portable cassette player, and an FM transmitter that lets me plug in anything with a stereo miniplug, and Amazon MP3 downloads (no DRM). All bought cheap.

So I can pretty much play whatever I find on sale, used, etc., including cassette books, lectures on CD's, whatever. And in either the '92 Honda (broken cassette player but working AM/FM radio) or the '06 Honda (CD player but not MP3). And I can download new tracks from Amazon and not worry about how many copies I make.

I do download free digital music loops and songs from Sony's acidplanet.com, but generally these are pretty repetitive and boring. For me, anyway. But they can be useful for soundtracks (I do short animations & videos).

And I rip favorite tracks from old CD's to create MP3's for either the Creative player (tiny, maybe several dozen songs but reloadable) or the CD MP3 player (maybe a hundred on a CD). So overall its a great convenience.

But although the amount of available music seems to have gone up exponentially, for me it just makes finding good music harder. Mostly its on those old CD's ...