Music Online?

I’m just curious if online music is ever going to work. I’m sure that people were saying that when CD’s first came to market too. I was an early adopter of MyMP3.com when you could load a CD into your drive and “Beam it” to them to prove that you owned it. Then they would unlock it for you, and let you play it from anywhere. Now you’ve got services like Rhapsody and Pressplay that are testing out similar subscription services.

I think my problem with them is not their offering, it’s the state of current music devices. For someone to feel like they “own” music right now, you’ve got to physically have it on one of many different harddrives in your digital music life. I’ve got one at work, one at home, one on my MP3 player.Then I still have my car CD changer, and my home stereo components that aren’t hard drive based. I’ll get used to paying 99 cents per song when I get to the point where I can have it in my own online harddrive, that isn’t owned by any particular music service, it is owned outright by me. It is my physical hardware that is broadcasting my music collection to me only, to any of the devices in my privately purchased world. The music quality can’t be like today’s “streaming” sound either (unless it is today’s broadband variety which sounds pretty good). Anyone have a better idea?