I remember when having a 12-disc or even a 10-disc CD changer was like
the ultimate in music selection for your wheels. I
mean, we were talking hours of music that would only have to be swapped out
maybe once a week! Dude, forget the radio, I was set!

Well that was like, so "The Wedding Singer," and things have changed. 12 discs
just don’t cut it anymore, and the record industry
cares little about technology – as is evident with the minute selection of
CD-TEXT titles available. People want more, want it
faster, and want it in a small footprint. Oh yeah, it still has to sound
killer, too. Well, guess what? It’s already here!

How about 20,000 songs, all titled (fully titled), cataloged, and even
sorted to your liking? It’s called the iPod. While
Apple envisioned their hot little hard drive music player to be used on the
go, I don’t think Steve Jobs ever thought he’d have it
going with his BMW 755i on the way to his next meeting with U2. Adding a hard
drive to a car stereo isn’t a new concept. Blaupunkt and Kenwood have both tried
it with little success. Where they fail, the iPod gains. The reason? Ease
of use and multi-use.

The iPod isn’t just for the car. It’s for just about anywhere. Your
car, home, work, the club, wherever. It’s small and
convenient. It’s a piece of cake to use and requires no manual to wield or
even get started for the first time. Heck, you’ll have
all those Barry Manilow albums on it in no time! With the addition of
connection kits that allow the iPod to integrate into your
car, this is a no-brainer.

Dension
was the first to realize this, and then Alpine with
its iPod Interface KCA-420i.
While
both products show some wetness behind their ears, they’re not far off from
perfection, either. Giving you basic CD changer
functionality (and that’s exactly what both companies do – use the CD Changer
logic in the systems bus), you get Play/Pause, Next,
Previous, Fast Forward, and Rewind. Alpine goes a step forward and allows you
to access playlists and browse your entire iPod’s
library all from an Alpine head unit made in the last ten months. Brilliant!

Now if you’re like me, you can already see the music in this idea. If anyone
can take the most popular hard drive music player and
just drop it into his car system without any fuss, why would anyone buy a CD
changer? Why would anyone continue to use a
changer? With this kind of power and enormous music capacity, you’d have to
be an 8-Track lovin’ purist not to ditch the changer
from the Benz to the Bug! And other manufacturers are going to wise up to
that, too. That’s why CD changers are going to become a
thing of the past. Like the LP to the CD. The VHS to the DVD. The FTP to
the HTTP. Yes, we will soon all be scrolling through
playlists instead of magazine cartridges. Hallelujah!