iTunes

ALMOST THIRTY YEARS AGO (can it be?) the compact disc promised “perfect sound forever.” Two decades later the iPod, iTunes, and their ilk offered all music, everywhere, all the time.

Today, the first innovation is in decline while the second — despite all the quibbles about data-compressed sound quality, piracy, and the degradation of music into a disposable, mixable, mashable commodity — is ascendant. And yet, some few of us are ungrateful enough to want both; the convenience and ubiquity of iPod-like music files, and the listening experience that digital audio at its best can deliver.

Of course, the people in Hell want ice water too.

Steve Jobs may have moved on, but Apple's quickly returned to shaking up the music and movie industries in the good old-fashioned way: with beta releases and rumors.

DEFINING A NEW PRODUCT CATEGORY

I'm struggling with this: What do you call these things? Digital Media Streamers? Digital Media Receivers? How about media extenders, media streamers, or digital media adapters? Maybe Internet Streaming Devices? If you abbreviate that last one, it sounds a bit sinister. "Dude, I got an ISD." Annnnnnnd, you're on a list somewhere.

It was kind of a big deal with The Beatles finally made their way onto the ever-growing digital music behemoth that is iTunes, but we find this news just as, um, satisfying. Starting this week, 27 Stones records will be finding their way onto the audiophile music service, HDTracks.com.