Big record labels may be weeping these days, but consumers' desire to rip and burn their favorite songs is ringing up sales for gearmakers and retailers.
Americans bought 635,000 digital-audio players last year, up from just a few thousand in 1999, according to the market-research firm NPDTechworld. Electronics retailers sold 10.4 million CD burners (half of them installed in PCs), a 50% increase over 2000. Computer makers increasingly market their machines as rip-and-burn ready. Come June, you won't even need a PC to do the job. A firm called QPS is launching the first portable CD burner, called Q007, that copies...