I have been neglecting my music category for a while now. This must change. As an extremely nerdish audiophile, I have, for many years, eschewed mp3 players as a waste of money. I was wrong, or at least I'm now wrong. The new iPod's are the bomb. A few weeks back, I bought one. I have not regretted it. The AAC encoding provides an audibly superior advantage over MP3 rivals. I have a very hard time distinguishing it from CD in most cases. In addition, over the last few weeks, I've discovered that the convenience of being able to carry a good portion of my CD collection - in an extremely listenable format - in my shirt pocket just frickin rocks!

More importantly, as I've posted previously and continue to believe, the iTunes Music Store might just save the music industry. Along these lines, here is a list of albums, or partial albums, that I've purchased from the iTunes Music Store:

• The Donnas - Spend the Night
• Praxis - Transmutation
• The Bad Plus - These Are the Vistas
• The Streets - Original Pirate Material
• Tony Williams - Turn It Over
• The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Live From The Middle East
• Sonic Youth - Sister
• Cibo Matto - Stereo Type A
• Afroman - Because I Got High (just the one song because that shit is funny)

All of these items are things that I was on the fence about purchasing or were for backfilling my current CD collection with things I used to have on cassette. I probably never would have considered them if they were more than $9.90.

If anyone is on the fence about purchasing an iPod, just do it. Apple has a huge winner on it's hands, and combined with the iTunes Music Store, could very well own the online-music biz for quite a while unless something changes quickly.