IPOD JUST A STEP IN MUSIC'S EVOLUTION.

Byline: STEVEN ROSENBERG Local View

THE iPod is now a precocious 5-year-old.

The click-wheel music player saved Apple Computer's corporate bacon. But has it created the kind of music-business and cultural mayhem for which many give it credit?

While the iPod and Apple's companion iTunes music store are indeed revolutionary, there's more afoot than just the iPod itself.

Like the portable CD player before it, the Sony Walkman, cassettes, LPs, 45s, 78s, wax cylinders and radio, the iPod represents a degree of technological evolution and change that would come one way -- and with one device -- or another.

And when your Shuffle will no longer shuffle, the devaluation of recorded music as a salable product -- given that it's too easy to get for free -- is transforming entertainment way more than the iPod itself.

Sure, iTunes is there, at 99 cents a song, to offer files that can be transferred to a maximum of five computers. But should I pay 99 cents each for as many of the 20 tracks as I want on that Elvis live record, get the whole album from iTunes for $9.99 ... or the physical disc, with no restrictions, for $8 from Amazon?

There's still plenty of free -- and illegal -- music out there in the post-Napster era. I found Queen's ``Bohemian Rhapsody'' in about 5 minutes. I felt guilty enough to get it on iTunes for 99 cents the next day. But when I bought ``99 Luftballoons'' from iTunes, I picked the ``best match'' and got some weirded-out, 20-years-later live recording. And does anybody want one company -- even (or especially) Apple -- controlling the hardware, software and media of all recorded music?

The whole idea that recordings as a business is over and done with just means a new model needs to be found, as the Clash once sang, to ``turn rebellion into money.''

It means dealing constructively with downloads, albums vs. tracks, iPods, iTunes, MySpace, merchandising and more.

Thirty years or so ago, Gene Simmons realized that music was one thing, but selling KISS-branded merchandise was another way more lucrative one.

Hey, I spent 99 cents on ``Rock and Roll All Nite.'' What I didn't spend was $200 on a KISS concert ticket. Sorry, Gene.

The world of recorded music -- and the money that could be made from it -- was by no means static from the 1920s through 2000. During World War II, there was a union-imposed ban on recording entirely. And the record industry got a 15-year reprieve from retooling and creating its own survivable future while CD reissues boosted bottom lines in the '80s and '90s.

And the same companies that needed Apple's Steve Jobs to bring legitimate digital music sales to reality, though they could've done it themselves and reaped all the benefits.

As Jobs and Co. bask in the profitable glow of their most successful product ever, remember that the iPod is a tool. There's always a new way to hammer that nail.