Will the portable player craze be a boon for online services?

According to this article over at the Register, MP3 players are really starting to catch on. Probably, the single most influential device of them all has to be the iPod. With an installed base of over 3 million players, they are presently enjoying over 25 percent market share. Estimates are that Apple could go into 2005 with as many as 5 million of their players in peoples hands.

Right
now, there are nearly 11 million players of various makes and models out in the public as we read this. If you compare these figures, with the amount of players last year, it's a doubling of the market! By the end of 2004, it's estimated that over 21 million units will be floating around out there, which is quite amazing. But, will it be a boon for the online music dealers? You would sure think so.

But while the consumer craze for hardware grows throughout the year, the prognosis for online music services is less secure, reckons Informa.The researcher believes that punters will concentrate on ripping their CD collections and transferring tracks to their players rather than buying downloads, at least in any significant volumes."It"s great news for the actual manufacturers, but for the music companies at the moment it"s not going to be an instant boom," Simon Dyson, an analyst with Informa, told Reuters.

Well, you can bet your white earbuds, that a lot of folks won't be able to afford to spend thousands of dollars to fill their various players at 99 cents a track. We have to expect that many will want to use their existing collections from CD to fill the void that is their player. Of course, the online versions had to be be made small, for quick downloading, but some of us can hear the difference. So why not rip your own at a much higher bit rate? You have the room that's for sure. Especially these new hard disk players, which have 20 to 40 gigabyte drives. Thanks to GristyMcFisty for
reporting this news to us.

Source: The Register