First came vinyl records, which brought music into households through much of the 20th century and were all the rage in the 1960s and 70s, when virtually every home had a turntable. Then, the CD arrive in the 1970s, followed shortly after by the CD player.
The emergence of Napster (now Rhapsody) in 1999 marked the initial stage of the digital music revolution, but it was Apple's (AAPL) release of iTunes in 2001, and the launch of the iTunes store a couple years later, that marked a more dramatic and permanent shift in the music world.
Since then, the innovation in digital music and the expansion of cloud technology has unleashed a whole rage of options.
Here are just a few:
To buy and manage music:
Music cloud storage and streaming:
Rhapsody, Amazon Cloud Player, Google Music, Rdio, Spotify, Grooveshark, Subsonic, Apple iTunes Match and iCloud
Pandora, AOL Radio
Contact Heather Somerville at 925-977-8418. Follow her at Twitter.com/heathersomervil.