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Apple's iPod, which transformed the way music is sold and distributed and revolutionized the consumer electronics industry, turned 10 on Sunday.

There is rampant speculation that Apple will soon join Amazon and Google to offer a service to store your music in the cloud and stream it to your devices.

Apple may have online music streaming deals in place with all four major U.S. music labels in time for the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6, according to online rumors. The company recently signed a deal with EMI Music and is close to wrapping up deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, according to CNET. Previous reports said Apple signed a deal with Warner Music in April.

Google's long-awaited cloud-based music player, Music Beta by Google, will launch today at the company's Google I/O conference, according to Billboard. The service will be free for US users lucky enough to get an invite from Google, with priority given to those with the Verizon version of the Motorola Xoom tablet and to attendees of the I/O conference. Unfortunately, Google didn't come to a license agreement with the major music publishers -- much like Amazon failed to get publishers' blessings with the launch of the Amazon Cloud Drive -- so Music Beta is essentially just a massive remote hard drive.

That little green robot must be struggling to catch his breath.

In my lifetime, music has been delivered on vinyl, cassettes, eight-track tapes, CDs, and audio DVDs. How do I listen to it now? Usually with a PC or a smartphone, and occasionally with an MP3 or other media player. I downloaded much of that music or ripped it from CDs, but the rest of it came from LPs and cassettes.

A reader asked about re-recording his phonograph collection in digital form