Opinion | iPod is dead after twenty years of revolutionizing music consumption: As a muso, bring it back already
By J.B.Browne
It's the end of an era; the iPod is dead.
There's a strange, petty irony to the disappearance of my first ever iPod. It was the original one. The one Steve Jobs presented to the world on October 23, 2001. The one with four orange glow buttons across the middle under a crude black and white screen. The one with a big white scroll wheel perfectly sculpted according to Vitruvius' proportions of thumb. The one that stuffed a thousand songs in a pocket, genociding Compact Discs, MiniDiscs, and cassette tapes in one tiny nuclear pop. The one that revolutionized how the world consumed musical content. The one that was stolen from the shallow side pocket of a padded MUJI jacket circa mid-2000s Tuesday afternoon as I, mindlessly browsing vinyl, Berwick Street, London, United Kingdom, became the victim of an iCrime never to be solved. The one I had planned to load up with low bit-rate digital rips of my analog record collection. The one I hated, initially dissatisfied with the fidelity of MP3 sound yet quickly caving into the conveniences of a new technological Century. The one that earned a spot alongside those infinite packets of cigarettes, failing as did I to leave the house without either.
The one I loved, the one that got away.
This week, Apple officially announced that it would no longer be making new iPods, to which I say boo. The horns of the apocalypse end-of-life cycle announcement have either plied you with irreverent nostalgia OR, in my case, practical annoyance. The iPod Classic, Touch, Shuffle, and Nano versions are gone forever. You're now in possession of some neo antiquity as auto collectors of classic tech.
It's almost a guarantee that pre-smartphone iPod ownership has been a part of our lives. Until, of course, it wasn't. After my original iPod found its way to another home illegally, others came and went as often as flattened toothbrush bristles. Somewhere along the lines, I managed to acquire two or three iPod Touches and two or three iPod Nanos. I once ventured to another brand of MP3 player, Creative Zen, and it was the worst listening experience of my life. I took it back and exchanged it for my second iPod Touch.
So why my annoyance? Why do I still use an iPod in 2022? Well, it's simply because using an iPod for just music is a beautiful thing that informs healthy listening habits. That's it. Oh, and my iPod Nano is a tremendous running buddy that is light, full of carefully selected albums, and impervious to incoming distractions. I don't want to run in the rain with my iPhone. I like the option to be alone with my thoughts in the rain with my music, and that is all. I don't want the temptation to take pictures anytime I see something. I want to take in life as it happens to a soundtrack of my choosing, and that is all.
The iPod series is undoubtedly one of the most interestingly colorful product lines in Apple's history, which started to fizzle out gradually with the first iPhone in 2007. Since then, the product line of iPods began to thin, seemingly appealing only to a younger audience who needed a stepping stone to their first Apple smartphone and folks like myself who saw the benefits of a music-only machine.
Sometime around 2010, a friend remarked in disbelief that I still carried around an iPod as a separate device when my iPhone did "all that and more, mate," he said. Then we were on the cusp of streaming services, so my dedicated device for just music still had a place, helping to free up space for photos on my iPhone, which made absolute sense. But then streaming services arrived, and we had Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp, and even YouTube and Soundcloud, ridding us all of the need to own and manage MP3s. For most, this was a disk drive space-saving godsend. But not I. I loved hunting down live bootlegs and rare recordings that streaming services were not providing. I loved torrenting a full concert that couldn't be heard other than in illegal MP3 format that I would diligently label with artwork on my precious little pods.
But then the streaming services caught up. As the internet became an unofficial humanitarian documentation entity, everything started to appear online in streaming form. I could now see all those rare recordings and live bootlegs as actual concerts instead of just imagining I was there. Any music ever could be streamed, and I naturally started to use my iPod less than before. The iPod died then.
But I love music, and the feelings of listening to music on a dedicated player for just that affords a tactile experience that's neither physical media nor streaming through the ether. It's unique and has its place.
There are just two iPods in my possession. One is a classic brick-styled pod loaded with songs from the past. It's a tome and time capsule to a period of my life that even just scrolling through the playlists brings back so many tangible scenes. The other is my beloved 7th generation iPod Nano. I love this little thing, and I would buy a new iPod Nano if Apple still made them. But they don't. Boo.
RIP iPods. Come back already.
As he would refer to himself, J.B. Browne is a half "foreign devil" living with anxiety relieved by purchase. HK-born Writer/Musician/Tinkerer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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