Will the media format create more sales?
New SD cards with DRM-free mp3s.

Let's be honest here. Why are CD album sales falling while online digital format music sales aren't quite rising to meet them? Is it that people hate CDs? They're just too bulky, and hard to convert to mp3?

I do not think so.

Personally, I like CDs. They're the most stable storage format I've ever seen. Yes, they can get scratched, but there's no problem with magnetic fields, and heck, you could drop one in a bucket of water and it would be fine. I don't know any other media format you can say that about. They also have that shiny rainbow gloss going for them.

But seriously, online piracy has expanded in myriad ways since the demise of napster, from p2p software that encrypts information en route, to online services that make transferring large files trivial, to new p2p services such as bit torrent that lower the strain on bandwidth for sharing outgoing files.

Transferring files from CD mp3 is trivial. And, honestly, I like having the backup in lossless format (audio CD tracks are in AIFF) for songs I do spend money on. Or I like getting mp3s on Amazon for the ease of it.

I could also go on a rant about how there really hasn't been much new music of any note (pun unintended) in the last few years, certainly not the way there was in the early 90s, but I would likely come off sounding like an old fogey (darn kids get off my lawn! In my day, we had Lollapalooza! You don't know commitment to the music until you've had to pay $60 for flannel shirts to wear in the desert!).