How many years before MP3 becomes king?

Mp3 players are enticing because they're new and also because they're so easy. I just purchased a 40 GB iRiver, (similar to the iPod, but better in my opinions.) I'll be away at college next year, and I'll be able to put half of my CDs into a little box that can fit in my pocket rather than toting a portable CD player and my little case of CDs around the campus. Also, I can easily put wav or Mp3 files on my player. Storage space is getting cheaper and in a few years, my 40GB player will be obsolete. By that time, there will probably be players with 10X the capacity of mine for a much more reasonable price. At that point, Mp3 will be dead because there is no reason to use a lossy format when you can purchase HD space cheaply and use wav files.

Looking at it differently now then in previous post. If these new reduced data formats and satellite broadcast music delivery methods draw new fans to music in large numbers,then we all win.A natural progression should be fans of these delivery formats today,some will be audiohounds of tomorrow.

73 years

I agree / strongly feel that with how cheap hard-drive space and bandwidth is becoming, there's no reason to further compress a nowhere near perfect format like CD. What I expect the market to (eventually) do is move to a non-local / streamed format over physical media (imagine, if we silly consumers / materialistic fools got over having to 'hold' a CD, you could pay probably $3-4 for the right to listen to a full CD anywhere any time, basically the right to playback but not own a physical media, and obviously be allowed to make a backup/portable - much like iTunes Music Store / burning a CD etc). I also call witness to the trend in digital cable / on-demand, if Time Warner wanted to, they could probably put Netflix and Blockbuster out of business in 6 months (obviously with a HUGE investment in hardware and some infrastructure improvements, but nontheless, quite doable, I believe someone recently tested well over 300Mb over standard rg6 coax, and DVD is what, 10-12 MAX?)

I think that MP3 will be king. As I think it should. Maybe not the exact format being used right now at this moment, but one that works on the same principals. Don't get me wrong, I don't listen to anything like that. I listen to vinyl at home and FM in my vehicle on the way to work and back.
But I think the idea of having thousands of songs at your fingertips is the future for us all. Every vehicle should come standard with a music bank that will hold at least 5000 songs of your choice. No more CD's to drag around. No more of our kids borrowing our CD's without asking. It just seems to me that this is the way to go.
I also think there is a place for it in our home. Background music while working around the house. Or even an outdoor system where sound quality is difficult to get right anyways.
Todays generation does not care one bit about the sweet spot. All they care is to have what they want at their fingertips when they want it.
Like it or not, it is here to stay.