So many interesting threads in this piece on the marketplace of digital music players.

“For every one of the other players we sold people bought 70 to 80 iPods,” Mr. Griffin [sales manager of Data Vision in NYC] said one day recently as shoppers ogled a store display of more than 50 different models of players ranging in size from cigarette lighters to small jewelry boxes.

And later on in the article:

Like Apple, with its popular iTunes Music Store, Sony is also creating a music downloading service, Connect, that will cater to its own players. “Our strategy for the new Walkman experience is a complete system for downloading, managing and playing back music on a wide selection of Sony portable devices,” said Todd Schrader, vice president for marketing in Sony Electronics’ personal mobile products division.
But if that music is in a Sony personal player, it will be playing in Sony’s Atrac format, Mr. Schrader said. That means that consumers who already have music stored on flash memory or hard drives in other formats, like MP3 or Windows Media, would have to convert it to Atrac to play in Sony players.
But some digital music enthusiasts contend that converting from one format to another degrades audio quality. Others complain that some formats (like Atrac) are more restrictive than others (like MP3) in the number of times a song can be played or on how many players. And some industry analysts question whether another music service, even one with Sony’s brand and marketing muscle, can succeed in an already-crowded marketplace. In addition to iTunes, there are services from Wal-Mart, Musicmatch, BuyMusic.com and the recently introduced Napster 2.0, to a name a few. More are expected soon from big companies like Dell and Microsoft.
“Sony comes in here and says, ‘We are going to do it on our own,’ ” said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst with Forrester Research. “The question is, can Sony be as successful as Apple has been in creating support for its own format?”

Lots of Players, Little Harmony