Death of The iPod

Charles Wright *)

KOMPAS.com - Remember that quaint age when people actually bought their music - way back before everyone started stealing the stuff online?

Now it's beginning to look like the idea of collecting music, legally or illegally, is about to become equally outdated. We suspect that the days of the iTunes music store and the iPod (although possibly not the iPhone and Touch versions) are also numbered.

A few separate events over the past couple of weeks have got us thinking about the new world of music. Firstly, this week the Spotify music streaming service finally cracked the US market, apparently after capping free listening to 10 hours a month.

Spotify has been a great success in the UK and northern Europe, signing up more than 10 million users to stream whatever they want from a library of more than 15 million tracks. The streaming quality is absurdly good, so good that 1.6 million of its users have actually agreed to - gasp! - pay a subscription for additional features such as having the service available on their mobile phones.

We are prepared to bet that the round of negotiations between Spotify and the US record labels would also have included access to the Australian market. We'd be very surprised indeed if Spotify didn't turn up here within the next 12 months, just as the local iTunes Store followed the opening of its US parent.

Last month, the Anubis.fm subscription service which is available in Australia, announced that it was doubling its library to 4 million tracks. That will shortly rise to 6.5 million tracks, when Anubis adds the Australian music charts back to the 1950s.

You can play that music via a PC, but it becomes much more accessible, and in our view becomes the future default for music lovers, when you link it with a multi-room music streaming system.

That's the other significant development of the week: the release by the Rolls Royce of that category - Sonos - of a new, cheaper speaker called the Play:3.

It looks like a typical desktop package, but the heft of it tells you there's more inside: three Class-D digital amplifiers and three drivers - one tweeter and two 3-inch mid-range, with a passive, rear-firing bass and self-sensing adjustment that shifts the sound field depending on whether it's positioned vertically or horizontally.

Put two of them in one room, and you can set them up as left and right channels of a true stereo system.

* Hands on: PlayON!HD2 streaming media player

At $419, the Play:3 brings the attractions that have lured more moneyed audiophiles to its big brother, the S5 (now called the Play:5) to a much wider audience.

Even without a subscription service, the way the Sonos links to a music library on your PC or Mac or Networked Attached Storage, is compelling. It gives you easy access to internet radio, streaming different programs to different rooms or the entire house.

With a subscription service, it's completely addictive. Party playlists become almost infinitely deep. Someone wants to hear another track? No problem, just plug it in.

It's a combination that's highly likely to have you experience once more that forgotten feeling of pulling out your wallet to feed your taste for music.

*) Charles Wright works as a tech manager for his wife's business, runs a blog on e-health, rides a scooter and loves his iPhone/iPad/Sony Vaio and sundry other pieces of tech that have found their way to the Bleeding Edge Lost Home for Electronic Toys.