Like most people I know, I almost always listen to music while I walk. But I don't own an iPod. I don't own a Zune. And I don't own a Walkman (they finally stopped making those last week). Instead, I have a smart phone with an app called Grooveshark. For $36 a year, I can search and listen to almost any song on my phone, at any time.
Does that sound fantastical? Well, it gets better. On my work computer, I can log into Grooveshark.com, line up some songs, and listen on my phone during an afternoon walk. If the walk takes me to the library to do research, I can sit down at a different computer, log back into Grooveshark, and press play on the same music lineup. When I walk out of the library, those changes are saved on my phone app, and I can keep the tunes rolling. Unlike Apple iTunes libraries, which live in the memory of one computer or one iPod/Pad, my personal Grooveshark music lives online, and I can access it any Internet connection.
There are techies out there that will read those paragraphs and sigh at me like a late-adopter Luddite. It's true! I am a late-adopter Luddite. But the fact that a fogy like me can fall so desperately in love with Grooveshark is proof that the promise of "cloud music" is real -- and a real threat to a la carte music like iTunes.