> the average car owner would not not want an empeg player in his car if you gave it to him for free.

I agree with that. Hell, my mother was like "Well, that's nice, but will it play tapes?" I'm working on her though...

It is definantly for that small subset of people where music lovers and computer geeks combine. I think it is perhaps just ahead of it's time though, MP3s and the gadgets to play them are becoming more popular every year. The music industry will eventually get with the program and MP3s will be sold over the net. It will be just as easy to get MP3s as it is to get discs and people will be more computer literate and willing to deal with the issues involved in transferring music.

How long? Who knows, perhaps as long as a generation. We'll all be old farts telling our grandkids about the day we got our first mp3 car player and they will be saying "Yeah, so what's the big deal?"