More often than not, we usually like only a few songs from a particular album or movie soundtrack. There have been innumerable occasions when I have wished that I could buy or possess only those songs that I like and get rid of the rest of the crap! I am sure most of you share these feelings.

With vinyl records we had to buy the entire record whether or not we liked the entire album. Trying to listen to just one or two particular tracks was always a big pain, unless we had those 45RPM EPs with only one or two songs on them. Cassettes gave us a choice. We could tape what we wanted. But the choice was limited, because it involved the hassle of first getting access to the music that we wanted and then to painstakingly tape the necessary selections, for which we needed high quality tape decks, etc., though there used to be people who did this professionally for a price. My favorite "taper" was the owner of a shop called Audiosonic in Juhu, who could get me whatever I wanted and tape the songs in a day or two; I still have all those cassettes. However, finding a particular track on a cassette is still a major headache and trying to find a single song on the car stereo can actually lead to suicidal tendencies.

CDs have made life easier. Even though we still have to buy the entire CD, the presence of remote controls, the ability to go directly to the song that we want to listen to and obviously the better quality of sound, have made them a gold standard. But even now, unless we have multi-CD changers, to listen to just two-three songs from a stack of CDs, requires considerable exercise.

MP3 has completely changed the rules. Using ripper software such as MusicMatch, on our own PCs, we can rip songs from audio CDs and convert them into .mp3 files. Typically each file is about 3-5MB in size and a 2-5GB partition can store a large number of songs. Most software like MusicMatch automatically assigns genres (rock, pop, jazz, etc.) to the songs and allows us to create playlists of specific songs in specific orders. Once we have created a playlist of the songs we like, we can listen to these songs in whichever order that we want; the playlist can consist of selections from a variety of different albums and artistes, and we can do away with the tracks that we don't like.

The problem with listening to MP3 songs on the computer is the poor sound quality, unless we have very good speakers. If there is a CD-writer available, we can burn these songs on a CD-R and then play them on MP3 CD compatible CD-players. Typically one CD can hold between 150 to 200 songs.

An elegant alternative is to have an MP3 player such as the Diamond Rio 600 (www.riohome.com). This is a beautiful piece of work that allows us to store between 10-20 songs at a time (about 2 hours playing time for the 64MB option). These songs can be easily downloaded from the MP3 collection on our computer or an MP3 CD. We have complete freedom and control; we can choose the songs and the order in which we want to listen to them. Once we have had enough of these songs, we can delete them from the player and download a new set of songs; within about five minutes. The MP3 player is smaller than a Walkman and eminently portable, but also interfaces with the car audio through a cassette converter and with the home sound system through an EP-RCA cable.

I bought one of these pieces from Heera Panna last week and since then I have been having a whale of a time. I have almost finished converting my entire CD collection into MP3s and have set aside a 5GB partition on my notebook for these songs. 5GB can store almost a thousand odd MP3 songs. The first songs that I downloaded onto the Rio were from Dil Chahta Hai; once I had enough of them, I deleted them and switched over to a rock selection featuring Foreigner, Alan Parsons Project, Led Zeppelin and Bad Company. Today I have just finished downloading a selection of new numbers from a bootleg MP3 CD obtained from Lamington Road; these include a whole bunch of new artistes such as Manson and Backstreet Boys, groups and singers I have never heard properly before. After listening to them three-four times over the next week, I will delete these songs from the Rio and if I have liked any of them, I will probably go ahead and buy a CD or two of their music.

MP3 became really famous because of Napster, a piece of software that allows peer-to-peer networking. Napster allows us to browse through other peoples' computers for MP3 files and to download the songs that we want, onto our PCs. Napster, before being banned a few weeks ago, allowed millions of people the world over to download and exchange songs for free. The recording industry finally struck back and throttled Napster on copyright issues.

But bootleg MP3 songs are available everywhere. Go to www.google.com and type the name of the song followed by .mp3 and you will get a list of sites that have a copy of the MP3 song for downloading. The ethics of all this are probably the fodder for another column, but many artistes have now also started releasing MP3 versions of their songs for free or for direct purchase from websites.

We are still not completely there yet though. Complete freedom would be when the recording company puts up the MP3 or equivalent format songs on a website for downloading on a trial basis for a fixed number of plays (say 2-5 times) and then allows us to buy only those songs that we like. Probably then the concept of albums might also disappear, freeing groups and artistes from the hegemony of the "album" and the need to create at least 7-12 songs at one time. And it is also possible that eventually many artistes may be able to do away with recording companies for the distribution of their songs.

Many people are still happy with cassettes and CDs. Fair enough. But if one goal of a technology advance is more and more freedom of choice and control for the consumer, over the final product, then the way music delivery is going, would be one of the finest examples of such an achievement.