I take mine in many flavors. I have CDs, .MP3s, and .WMA files; I have not gotten esoteric enough to play with other file formats. I have looked at them, but as my collection grows I find it better to standardize on one or two formats, however as the collection grows it gets harder to consider converting to another format.
New music services are pushing .WMA files for the copy protection, .MP3s are the tried and true and have much greater device support (right now) than other formats, so I will stick with those for a while.
I currently take my music in the following ways,
1. Streaming – I privately stream my own collection to wherever I am. This is great, but is it limited to the upload of my ISP, and any bandwidth (currently to leave enough room for remote administration of my LAN I can only stream 192Kb files) or ToS (Terms of Service) restrictions they may or may not have.
Currently using Andromeda for HTML display and streaming of my collection http://www.turnstyle.com/andromeda
2. CDR – The car stereo is wondrous for those long commutes (35 miles one way). This means I can churn through a lot of radio, audio CDs, and MP3 files. It is even more wondrous when it can read CDRs, MP3 and WMA files.
3. Portable Hard Drives - Yes, this a great if not a little bit bulky. Drives are large enough and cost effective enough right now that you can very easily move just about any moderate to large music collection with a portable drive today.
Need storage with redundancy? The entry level network attached storage devices from Lacie and Buffalo should get you going well.
4. Music services who needs these right? This is the natural evolution of online music, IMO they are in a state of infancy and should offer some real break throughs in the coming years. The talk of pros and cons of these is another article of its own. Napster, Yahoo Music, Rhapsody, iTunes, and more? Who will be left standing?
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