There was a time when my music collection took up a wall. There were hundreds of albums and hundreds of cassettes, and even when I moved on to CD and shoved my vinyl into boxes that are still in my shed, the CD collection took up massive chunks of space.

But here’s how I listen to music now. Using the trusty Bushman Delta Frost pocket harp to provide size perspective, I present to you an Archos 404 hard-drive-based player, and the Creative Zen V Plus flash player. The Archos, which I use mostly to play music through my home stereo and for movies when traveling, can hold 200 albums without trying. The Zen, which I use in my car almost exclusively, holds 60 and is about as long as my thumb. Both are refurbs and I paid a total of $135 for both.

I bring this up because tonight, I erased iTunes from my computer — something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, especially after I sent my three-year-old iPod to my niece in Florida. And I erased several other iTunes helper programs as well, including the godawful QuickTime, which was mostly good for drilling its way onto my PC and not letting go. These players don’t need that stuff, and neither does my online music collection.

My current digitized music collection — perhaps 150 albums that I actually listen to — fits easily onto a couple of DVDs. There was a time when it would have filled a bookshelf and weighed a couple of hundred pounds. But in these days of miracle and wonder, it hardly leaves a mark.