My friend Andrew puts his finger on the real heart of the digital music revolution:

The Joy of Digital Music That I am rediscovering, or in some cases hearing for the first time, music I already own is symptomatic of what a lazy culture we have become (or least how lazy I am personally). Opening a CD case, carrying it to the player, putting it away again, these are inconvenient tasks! However, clicking the little shuffle button and going about your business is a piece of cake. Ironically, now I that have this archive digitized, I never use the corresponding search functions, the feature I once longed to have. I find I'm content to either select a song or album directly, build a playlist or just run the whole thing on random. Go figure.  [more]

Myself, I've written my very own music server so that Laura and I can listen to our CDs anywhere there's a fast internet connection. The collection is fully indexed and searchable on track title, album title, artist name, genre, subgenre, instrumentation, instrumental or vocal content, and other more esoteric designtations. We're nearing 19,500 tracks ripped, representing over 1,600 albums, and I estimate I'm 75 to 80% done ripping. I'm loading CDs into bankers boxes and storing them in the basement as they fill up. Ugly shelves are going away.

In the end, the entire collection will fit with lots of room to spare on a 200 Gb hard drive smaller than a hardcover novel. When I hit shuffle, as often as not I hear music I'm only marginally familiar with, if I know it at all.

If this isn't a science fiction world, I don't know what is.