Personal Music Players: A Retrospective

Much is made these days of the failure of the music industry to fend off piracy and fail to profit adequately from the huge technological advances which occurred with the coming of the CD.

That may be so, but in this era of over-consumption, houses with many large closets and master baths bought on no money down, let's not overlook how the basic standard of living for an average American has improved by leaps and bounds. Sometimes in deceptively small ways.

For example, many years ago, in the age of the audio cassette tape, I used to ski while listening to music. In those early years, it took a fair amount of initiative and a tolerance for some pain to do this.

I vividly remember some yard sales at Jackson Hole, in which my headphones were ripped off of my head- painfully. After my ears had already been crushed all morning by wearing goggles over the headphones, with the metal headpiece pressed into my ears and skull.

Changing tapes and batteries on the slope was not a simple process. Nor was carrying spares. Cassette tape boxes didn't do well in violent falls. The intense cold tended to drain batteries very quickly.

Ski clothing didn't accommodate music hardware. You had to figure out how to either use a pocket for a smaller cassette player, risking damage to the headphone cord as it flopped around outside your jacket, or clip the player somewhere inside ski your suit/jacket, feeding the cord up under it.

I don't think I had skied with music since the arrival of the CD player. With its bulk, sensitivity to jarring, and delicate controls, it was never, at least for me, a favored ski accessory.

All that has now changed. Yesterday, for perhaps the first time in two decades, I skied all day to music with almost no effort.

Thanks to iTunes and a $50 iPod Shuffle the size of a small refrigerator magnet, and a ski suit designed for music players, I had a surprisingly wonderful, hassle-free reintroduction to music on the slopes.

My ski suit features a small hole up near the collar for an ear bud cable to pass from a special, outside-accessed, internal pocket with a purpose-designed, Velcro closed music player pouch. The iPod's earbuds eliminate the goggle-hat-headphone bar problem and attendant pain.

The Shuffle, being solid state, with an internal battery, functioned perfectly in the cold as I skied bumps, steeps and cruisers. Even a fall could not stop it from playing. The small size of the MP4 player made it literally unnoticeable all day.

No tapes or CDs to change. No batteries to swap on a cold, steep slope while exposed to the wind.

And with iTunes, I could literally fill the Shuffle with new music daily, if I so chose. No time spent recording tapes or CDs with my favorite music.

Unlike twenty years ago, personal music for skiing is now inexpensive, unobtrusive, highly customized, and much longer-lasting and easy to operate.

It's a small creature comfort. And it never was a huge expense item. But, for me, it's a milestone of improved living standards. The sort of techno-business advance in hardware, software, and clothing for sport that offers much better value and enjoyment for your money than in the past.

Amidst much economic and business confusion and pain right now, it's nice to savor an example of innovative, productivity- and pleasure-enhancing progress which emerged, unplanned, from several different places in our economy.

No government could have orchestrated such lifestyle and standard of living improvement.