Classical Music on an iPod

I've been avoiding the iPod craze now, successfully, for a few years. The 40GB version was nice, and the 60GB version seems nicer, but I'm looking for a 200GB model. Lately it's been getting tougher to wait since I want my music in one place; all of it. However, I do use iTunes to listen to music. It's a nice front-end to music encoded in formats such as AAC, MP3, etc. I found this article which has some interesting thoughts on using iTunes or an iPod to listen to classical music. It's worth a read, and there's some interesting points you might find useful.

XM Radio

From the slightly-off-topic department today: XM Radio really bothers me. I live in Chicago, a fairly large city by most estimations, and technologically progressive one might add. Lately I've been seeing alot of XM radio antennae on most of those overly-large SUV's. So I started doing some thinking while sitting in traffic yesterday (see how bad traffic currently is here) and realized that over the course of a year, you would spend approximately $127 USD a year on the hardware (estimated between $50 USD and $200 USD currently) and subscription rates (approximately $8 USD per month). That cost is assuming the subscription rates stay static and hardware upgrades are required every three years. The wonder of this technology is that it is commercial free. No commercials. Nothing. Thankfully!

Now, does anyone remember how long it was before cable television started having commercials? I figure it was about 10 years before the money-makers realized they could make more money by selling advertising slots. If we figure that to be the case here (and it's a big assumption; no one knows if the XM satellites will even be in orbit in 10 years!) it comes down to approximately $1280 USD being spent per subscriber in a ten year period for commercial-free radio.

Now, compare this to buying a computer for $600 USD ("dude, you're getting a Dell!"), buying an Apple iPod for $200 USD, and paying $0.99 USD per downloaded song. That allows you to download more than 444 songs that you will own (i.e. you can put them on CD, keep them for as long as the CD lasts, etc). Maybe that's better for some folks.

Of course it doesn't mean that you can just go and find anything already offered by Apple, there may be songs that you don't end up finding. But then again, how many songs that you're hearing on XM radio are actually what you want to hear? I'm curious -- so if anyone has comments, please post them. And by the way I have a conspiracy-theory that XM radio is backed by groups such as the RIAA to limit the rights of artists and listeners to obtain good music, free. But that's for another topic...