Only to be lost when you iPod dies, or your hard drive fails. CD's are nearly permanent, and you can easily catalog them. They are independent of the device on which you play your music. Play them in the car, on the music system, anywhere. You own them, and you can do with them as you wish. They can be copied and used on other devices such as iPod or MP3 players.
All that seems to be true, but one of the most puzzling things to me was the lack of interest in the Mini-disk, as opposed to the CD.
The Mini is smaller, protected from scratches, and is completely editable, from deleting to adding to manipulating content. And they were pratically indestructible.
Alas, too late now, their time has passed.
They also used a proprietary Sony format. Sony - the company that put root kit spy ware in their CD’s. Gotta love them.
I had one for a year or two and sold it. It did sound very good.
The Mini is smaller, protected from scratches, and is completely editable, from deleting to adding to manipulating content. And they were pratically indestructible.
I don't know why the mini never caught on - were they compatible with all the regular CD players? How much music would they hold? The CD caught on partly because it held the equivalent of an entire vinyl record (I still have 240 of those in storage, though I doubt I'll ever play them again). There was no significant change needed on the part of the consumer other than needing to buy a CD player.
I'm not sure that having an editable format is desirable, particularly if you want to maintain a somewhat permanent archive of the music.
Mini discs cost too much, and at their size were just way too shopliftable. Products that give both buyers and sellers a reason to not like them tend to fail.
“but one of the most puzzling things to me was the lack of interest in the Mini-disk”
I was an early adapter of CD’s and said if a recording unit ever became available, I would have one. The recordable MD’s came out before recordable CD’s, so I bought the very first MD model Sony came out with and and still have it. I used it for field recordings. The Atrac codec was better than .mp3’s but still not as good as CD’s. Pop music sounded okay, but not symphony orchestras. Sony did a horrible job at marketing their proprietary stuff and did not come out with digital input/output until too late.