I’m tired of streaming.
It’s a common sentiment I’m seeing. Algorithms feeding us songs and artists, Spotify pushing AI generated music to avoid paying artists even the pittance they’re responsible for, every service cramming advertising in wherever they can.
The only reason I get good recommendations out of YouTube is because I make it a point to click weird stuff, so it has no idea what to show me, which is useful enough, but I find that it leads to distracted listening.
So when it came time for me to get an MP3 player, I looked around at options. There were plenty, to be sure, but I wanted a device that was thoroughly disconnected. Bluetooth connectivity is fine, but if you can so much as share a file across or process input, I don’t want it. That cuts down on candidates considerably.
To meander about the point a bit…
The only Apple tech I ever used was an iPod. Had a couple of them, actually - they were pleasant to use and honestly looked pretty cool. When I learned more properly about Apple’s business practices, like their right-to-repair nightmare and (I’ve always believed) deeply overpriced products, I became a grump about them. I’ve never used an iPhone for more than a few seconds at a time, and when someone hands me one, I fumble because I’ve used Android my whole life and have so much muscle memory associated with it. I only ever used a Mac for the first time just this year for work and was immediately furious at how usable it was compared to my Windows work laptop, which only fans the flames of eyes-wide-open hatred I have for Microsoft.
So this feels like a bit of an odd choice for modern me, but I went about it in a very me way.
I found a company that customizes them. Based in Ukraine (which could use the money right about now), not purchasing directly from Apple, and getting it with a few extra bells and whistles. 3000 mAh battery, USB-C port, Bluetooth audio connectivity (that Bluetooth adapter can’t do fuckall else and won’t connect to my car at all), and a Taptic engine, because why not?
Got it yellow with a transparent click wheel, and on the back, put two songs that get the vibe I’m going for on the back where they let me engrave something for free.
Then, when I got it, I threw Rockbox on it so I could use skins or other plugins and deal with more fluid library management. (And it can run Doom now, if I throw some WADs on it!)
Installing Rockbox was trivially easy, once I made sure I knew what I was doing.
Literally just plugged the iPod in, dragged the .rockbox folder into the top directory, and followed the instructions for booting into it for the associated device (which for a 5th gen iPod classic/iPod video was hold the select button and menu button for a few seconds each).
My only real concern was that the Bluetooth might not work, but because I couldn’t find any settings or modifications in the original Apple OS, I assumed it was entirely hardware based, and was correct, plus I can boot into the original Apple OS any time I care to.
Now, I’ve been building an offline music collection.
For smaller artists, I’ll purchase albums on Bandcamp, download it, and keep it locally. If they’re larger, I’ll try and find albums from the library and rip the CDs. I need to find a good record store, but that’s for another day.
I also love a good audibook, and have thus also grabbed the ones I had on Audible - Libation helped me download and strip all of my audiobooks of DRM, and I no longer use that service because they’re Amazon. Now I purchase books to listen to from Libro.fm so I can support a local bookstore, and they provide theirs DRM-free! I still use the Libby app, because supporting libraries is great, and it means I don’t have to buy extra Libro.fm credits, but that’s really my only concession.
Here’s my Music Management setup - I wouldn’t call it elegant, but it works and keeps my stuff organized.
Now I’m listening to music more delibrately.
That’s why I’ve got all the different notes in Album Thoughts. I want to listen to music, and really take it in sometimes, instead of just going from song to song to song. It’s nothing deep, but it’s at least better than skiing across the top and not even looking down.
YouTube will still be a method of finding music for me.
It hits me with enough stuff that interests me that I can use it as a jumping off point, but I know there’s plenty of other services for finding music out there.
I encourage you to do the same as me.
Maybe not with an expensive-ass iPod. That can be a substantial investment. But find something that you like! There’s a lot of cute little MP3 players out there. Rockbox supports a lot of different devices. Curate your stuff.