Nearly all the people I know who have and use MD are working (not necessarily full time professional) musicians. For them MD is a terrific working tool. It's also brilliant for discreet location recording.

It's also good for lots of other uses, but there it has stiff competition with existing media.

Prerecorded: there's not enough room for printed cover information. CD is about as small as you want to get for this.

If you just want to listen to commercially recorded music though headphones, solid state MP3 players compete.

The first generation of 4 and 8 track minidisc "Portastudio" style recorders have been followed by hard disk recorders because it's higher capacity, faster and cheaper.

CDR is reliable and cheap, and if I want to make someone a copy of something I've recorded I'll put it on CD because it's what I know the'll have and may even have several places thay can play it like a computer or maybe the car- even though it might have started on minidisc.

Mary H. and I have a CD recorded at home which we sell at gigs. It was recorded on 4 track MD and mixed down to stereo MD. We've had just one request for a tape (so we made a handful of tape versions) and none at all for minidisc.

Anahata