(i replied to mseager because I'm agreeing with him. )

Simply: The design of "in car CD rip while you listen" is a roadblock to the next generation of consumerism. 21st century is the "Digital Lifestyle" which allows for seamless movement of content between home, work, car, and portable. If the industries tap into this paradigm, they'll be able to make tons more "stuff to sell to consumers"; which is good for the industries.

(i'm having a hard time putting this in writing (maybe it's my head cold), so bear with me)

By clinging to old-world physically-distributed music and storage, industries are missing out on vast potential for new products based on electronic, dynamic storage. Yes, it's hard to quickly turn industries and WAY harder to turn consumer usage patterns, but the benefit of memory-based portable MP3 players has been embraced by a seemingly vast consumer-base.

My point is, if the industries can transition consumers away from CDs and to dynamic storage (memory cards, HDD, internet), the industries will be able to better achieve their bottom line: create stuff for consumers to purchase like mindless lemmings. We all have CD walkmans and CD headunits and CD home decks; we don't need to buy any more. But we don't all have dynamic music storage in car, home, and portably. So, move consumers to the more flexible dynamic storage and they'll buy all the stuff.

Look at MP3 portables. I've seen the most unlikely of people sporting Rio portables. They are enjoying the flexability of moving their music seamlessly around their Digital Lifestyle: from home to portable, quickly reconfigurable at will. Seems like a success.

Rio Central and empeg fill the "Digital Lifestyle" for home and car audio, but they stand alone it seems. Consumers already have one foot in the Digital Lifestyle with their MP3 portables. Once they see the benefit of moving their music (and other material) seamlessly between home, car, and portable; they'll GLADLY buy up whatever the industries can cook up.

Bottom line is: Kill off pressed rotational media for storage and distribution. Encourage consumers to create MP3 libraries just as they would rather save electronic documents than stash paper copies in file cabinets. Further do for music what e-mail did for people visiting the post office. And before you know it, there will be a massive demand for products which enable the Digital Lifestyle's ease and benefits.