I have ambitions/pretensions (delusions?) to being physically fit. I also have a bit of an aversion to shared sweat and public posturing, so quite a few years ago I made the decision to ditch the local fitness centre and invest in a home gym.

Now, as any wannabe gym-junkie pretender will tell you, you can't have a decent workout session without an appropriately motivational soundtrack. You know, Eye of the Tiger, the Rocky theme tune, We Can Be Heroes, Oops I Did it Again, Mmmm Bop...

Um.

My home gym lives in the shed. But at the time I purchased the gym, way back in the days of yore, my sound system lived in the house. Which was something of a problem, motivational-soundtrack-wise. Basically, as I couldn't be arsed lugging said system out to said shed, what I was left with tunes-wise was a crappy portable radio, playing (wait for it)—the radio.

Oh, the humanity.

Clearly, this musical travesty could not be allowed to continue. So, on the grounds that it practically qualified as a piece of fitness equipment, I invested in a second sound system. Genius, huh?

Which was great. I could now play CDs (yes, I'm old enough to have owned CDs) in the shed, instead of being subject to the distressingly unpredictable and frequently questionable vagaries of random radio-DJ's (alleged) musical (so-called) tastes.

And I did. Play CDs, that is. A lot. A whole lot. And, although I owned many CDs, I inevitably grew tired of them all (except of course for Kick, by INXS—genius). Which left only one solution—buying more CDs.

This went on for a while, but fortunately my bank-balance and my fitness-motivation were eventually saved by the advent of a little piece of technology known as the MP3.

Music without a CD? Whodathunkit?

There was iTunes (grr). There was whatever the hell Microsoft called their iTunes ripoff at the time. And there were all kinds of other exciting places you could buy your MP3s, some of which weren't even owned by the Russian mafia.

Of course, I use the word 'buy' in that very special noughties music industry sense of the word. The sense that strictly speaking, from a purely semantic point of view, if we're being completely pedantic about it, kind of actually meant, well...'steal'.

Sorry, sorry—of course, what I meant to say there is 'share'. Through the auspices of community-minded, charitable file-sharing organisations such as Napster, Gnutella and GetYourRedHotMP3sRightHere music fans such as myself were able to 'share' their MP3s. And, as a happy coincidence, they could (if they so chose) 'share' in the MP3s of others.

Or at least, so I heard. I of course would never indulge in such morally questionable activities. I was always more of a Limewire fan, anyway.

So, MP3s. Lotsa MP3s. Lotsa music.

Huzzah. Or, from another point of view, boo. The latter point of view being that of a person who did not have a computer in their shed (nor did I have an Ultimate Ears Megaboom 3 speaker or some such, as at the time Bluetooth was still nothing more than a 10th century Danish dead dude) How then was I to play my shiny, new MP3 files, while applying much-needed buff to my person?

No, youngsters—I couldn't play them on my 'smart' phone. If I recall correctly (and it's quite possible that I don't—since having kids, it's all been a bit of a blur) just about the smartest thing my phone at the time could do was make a phone call. On a good day, it could maybe stretch to a game of Snake. Birds hadn't even gotten angry yet, let alone flappy. Its 42 bytes of memory and 17mAh lead-acid battery would both have spontaneously combusted if confronted with the prospect of something quite as revolutionary as the actual playing of music (its hardwired, non-deletable (not for lack of trying) selection of three equally atonal ringtones excepted).

I'm pretty sure iPods were a thing at the time, but at approximately the cost of a small Central American country's GDP, they weren't a thing in my house. Or my shed.

Nope, the solution in my house was burning. No, not effigies of Steve Jobs. The solution was burning CDs. Ah yes, golden discs of goodness, just waiting to be filled with endless collections of ill-gott...completely legally purchased and/or ripped tracks of musical motivation.

So, huzzah again. Or, from another point of view, boo again. Because, quite frankly, not to put too fine a point on it, burning CDs was a pain in the arse. Sometimes the burn would mess up and rather than a lovingly curated disc of tuneful bliss, you'd find yourself in possession of a coaster.  Sometimes the MP3 files would have glitches (to this day, there are still tracks I can't listen to without anticipating one of those little pops or crackles or other auditory snafus that music aficionados of my generation came to know and loathe).  Finally, even if everything went swimmingly, you still had to label the stupid things, lest you wind up with yet another addition to the dreaded pile of 'mystery' discs (hmm, what killer tracks could be on this one? Ah crap, it's a bloody recovery disc for Windows ME).

I battled on in the shed, shuffling discs, dodging spiders and building reps, however, in time technology evolved, competition did its thing, and thankfully the era of the affordable MP3 player arrived. Figuring Steve already had enough cash, my weapon of choice was a little beast known as the iRiver Clix.

It was a little mini-brick of beauty. Two gigabytes of memory (that's two thousand megabytes, kids—count 'em), great sound, good battery life, it could play video (I never did, but I could) and it even handled those newfangled podcast thingies. Even better, despite the unfortunate, ubiquitous 'i' in its name, there wasn't an overpriced Apple in sight. With the judicious addition of an auxiliary cord, my shed stereo need never be sullied with those scuzzy burned CDs (mystery or otherwise) ever again.

Huzzah? You betcha. But of course, there was still a boo looming. Two gig meant hundreds of songs. Hundreds! Which was kind of amazing compared to all those stupid CDs, with their lame ten or twenty songs. Or at least, so it seemed, at first. Human nature being what it is, soon even that level of variety began to pall. Bear in mind, there were no AI-curated, custom-tuned, personalised, auto-generated playlists in those days. Shuffle was about as sophisticated as it got. If you wanted a playlist, you had to bloody well make it yourself. Where's the play in that? Worklist, anybody?

Plus, of course, the only way to transfer MP3s to the Clix was by plugging it into the computer, I had to remove the duds when I got tired of them, and (being an ever-so-slightly OCD-type music-fan) I also had to make sure that all tracks had their appropriate album imagery attached.

But then, suddenly—pineapples.  Er, I mean, wi-fi.

Cables? Pfft, who needs 'em?

Now, armed with my chunky 1st gen iPad (yes, Steve finally got some of my money), with the Clix firmly banished to the bottom drawer of history, the world was my oyster. Well, the contents of my computer's hard-drive were my oyster. If by oyster, we mean source of MP3s which, via the wonders of wi-fi, I could stream to my iPad, which I could plug into my shed-stereo, which I could then use to blast my perspiring self with Footloose and Danger Zone and other awesome Kenny Loggins tracks such as...hmm.

Still, paucity of Loggins material notwithstanding, it was huzzah all the way, baby. Nary a boo in sight.  Oh, sure—I was limited to whatever tracks I could cram onto my computer, by whatever cramming means were currently in vogue and/or not facing litigation, I still had to laboriously handcraft my playlists and song-queues, and sometimes low-flying birds or the occasional possum would inexplicably take out my wi-fi signal, but my shed's auditory capabilities were now undeniably pretty good, compared to the distinctly non-halcyon, dreary former days of DJs, CDs and other assorted musical BS.  Surely, this was as good as it got?

"Ha!" I hear you cry, and I can but concur, while shaking my head sadly at the smug naivety of my former iPad-wielding self.  Ha, indeed.

Because, of course, then there was streaming.  Pandora.  Spotify.  Apple Music.  A host of short-lived and quite frankly weird fly-by-nighters such as MOG, Rdio and Grooveshark.  Google Play Music.  Prime Music.  And so on. And on.  And on.  Forever.

Mind.

Blown.

Artist/song/genre-generated playlists.  Custom radio streams.  Album covers already present and correct.  Eleventy squillion songs.  On tap, unlimited and ever-growing.

And so we come to the present day.  iPad ditched, (actually quite) smartphone apped-up to the armpits and bluetoothed to my stereo, upgraded wi-fi wi-fi-ing like a boss.  Chuck in a few glitter-balls and a bouncer, and my shed could practically charge admission.

Bliss.  Or, so you would think.  You see, here we get to the bit of this long, rambling, musical history mini-TED-talk that actually qualifies it as a ridiculocity.

The bit where I stand in my shed, gym-gear on, phone in hand, finger poised, the entire world history of music just a mere swipe away...

And can't think of a single thing I want to listen to.