evolution of listening devices

I was on the subway last night and was startled to see a man listening to a tape player. It made me remember that when I was a kid, we still had a record player. There were some kid records with sing along songs that my brother and I used to like.

We had a tape player when I was pretty young, too. We used to listen to our Disney tapes all the time. I used to make mix tapes when I was in middle school. It was so time consuming. You had to listen to the radio, press record when a song you liked came on, then stop it when it was over. It was so hard to get the timing right. And you really had no control over the order of the songs.

I got my first CD player for Christmas when I was in 6th grade. My first CDs? Petra, Mariah Carey, Twila Paris. I noticed the other day that stores like Best Buy have really reduced the size of their CD displays in their stores. They used to have rows and rows of CDs... I used to hang out in Sam Goody in the mall when I was in middle school and high school. We thought it was so cool to check out the CDs and listen to the demos. I don't think people really buy CDs anymore. I haven't used a CD in a long time...but I have three huge cases of them collecting dust under my bed.

Now, of course, it's all about mp3s and the iPod. I purchased my first iPod in January. I have to admit that I love it. It's especially wonderful for working out, subway rides, train rides, plane rides, etc. My iTunes tells me that I currently have 9.2 days of music in my library. 9.2 days worth of music at my finger tips all the time. I don't have to deal clunky records, tapes, or cds gathering dust under my bed when I buy music now...but I recently had to purchase an external hard drive to store all my music...