What's a CD?

Apple just announced that it has sold 100 million iPods since 2001, and the company currently controls about 75% of the portable MP3 player market.

Just this weekend, while I was moving, I hooked up the stereo and iPod first, before moving anything else into the apartment. As my wife and I cleaned, unpacked and organized, we were greated by a great stream of music, sorted by playlist, artist or genre (we did listen to a few channels on Sirius for a few hours, but we prefered the comforting selection of our own music). On Sunday, we moved over the last load, which included about 400 CDs in two huge nylon books) from the old aparment. The CDs came from one closet and went straight into another.

I realized that I can't even imagine using CDs anymore. It would have been annoying to get up and change CDs every 45 minutes this weekend. Even if we fully loaded the five-disc changer, we wouldn't have had the same variety in music. What I once thought of as a convenience--a multi-disc changer and the portability of CDs--I know view as a hassle. Apparently, others do too: this weekend, I saw a guy at a flea market selling his entire CD collection, all without cases and straight from his CD book. I bet he ripped everything into a hard drive and is getting rid of the original copies, which is something that I should consider.

Anyway, since this was a long boring post about something (digital music) that has already been beaten to death, here's what I was listening to this weekend.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible. Somehow, I like this record more than the last one, which is tough to believe.

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Again, I'm surprised that I like this more than Good News for People Who Love Bad News.

The Rakes, El-P, Bright Eyes (I'm excited about the new album), LCD Soundsystem, OK Go, a little bit of Led Zeppelin, the Faces, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Bob Dylan (gotta have some classic rock while moving), the Raconteurs, Tokyo Police Club, Cold War Kids.

There's a lot of good music out there. Now I just have to get to more concerts. I missed the Cold War Kids for the second time this year, AND they were playing with Tokyo Police Club. Somehow, I'll figure out how to snag tickets in this fiercely competitive market (it seems like everything sells out in minutes).

PS - Does anyone know how to upload MP3s to Blogger?