It’s a Creative Zen Stone that I got as a Christmas gift in 2008. I just found it in a drawer, and it’s still holding charge. The last thing I put on it was The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen, in 2015 – I don’t know why, at that time I definitely had a smartphone.
It has a headphone jack, which immediately makes it better than every smartphone produced in the last several years, and it can easily drive my 80-ohm Beyerdynamic. The audio quality is as good as one can expect. The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB… my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.
Let me reiterate that this has been sitting untouched for a decade and was immediately ready for action. No login, no annoying software updates, expired subscription, or remote bricking by the manufacturer. Eat my shorts, Spotify Car Thing.
P.s. A Lifetime Of Adventure is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k
Enshitification has been a long slow burn, boiling the frog so we don’t notice.
we’ve noticed every step of the way
That sad truth is that most people don’t care
most people don’t care
lol, what a bad chain of takes. Most people care but what can anyone do against a trillion dollar company
hit up amazon, search mp3 players
There’s probably a hundred options. With Screens, without screens, can play video, 60GB, 80GB, 128GB.
You can EASILY still buy what we used to have (mostly even better) for $20-$40
You can still buy phones with headphone jacks.
At a point, collectively, we cared. We all bought at least a few things that eschewed enshittification. But eventually, for most, wireless headphones and not spending time curating our music won out for most.
I still have all my shit downloaded. Playlists on fleek. I stream it to myself now but could easily copy it to my phone.
But I don’t have an itch to have a stand-alone MP3 player anymore. Nor a pocket camera.
If pressed, i’d consider making an mp3 player out of an ESP32, but there’d have to be a compelling reason for me to do it.
Not continue to demand. Not purchase the unethical Google, the low value Apple and the enshittified Samsung. By purchasing products from corrupt capital-obsessed corporations, people are signifying that they don’t care. The good news is that the amount of people choosing ethics over greed is increasing.
*capital as in monetary value, capitalismOf course, the most problematic companies have income from so many integral sources that it’s impossible to fully boycott unless everyone along the chain does the same. Google’ primary income is advertising, so block all ads. Amazon’s is AWS, that serves internet for millions of systems, and the hardest to avoid.
Then get a bad phone from who?
Fairphone is a solid first choice, anything secondhand and Nothing are suitable also. GSG Mobile Brand Ratings
Controversial opinion: while enshittification does exist (from ‘value engineering’ or feature regression) because the profit motive, this imo is more a case of the userbase getting what they ask for. Normies who aren’t super tech literate and know how to navigate a PC, weren’t buying early mp3 players like iRivers, because it wasn’t accessible. You had to:
- Have a PC
- Know how to use that PC to either rip from CDs to mp3 or acquire mp3s
- Know how to sync files - most of these early devices were basically generic USB storage
- Know that these players exist, and be willing to spend a lot (for the era) on them compared to a cassette/CD player
Until the iPod hit the scene, nobody had solved #2 (iTunes store), #3 (iTunes), and #4 (Apple marketing) at the same time. #1 was a timing issue, as digitization increased and home PC prices dropped the userbase wasn’t as large yet. The devices downgraded because the broader userbase doesn’t ask/use the extra features, they want convenience and to not have to think. And as they are the demand segment for industry, so goes the product - dumb it down and mass market it.
I feel like my opinion is more controversial. I knew how to do all those things. I helped orchestrate a gigantic CD rip and swap using “lab” work computer equipment at a time when hard drive space was very expensive. I knew how to download files before Napster. When subscription music arrived and then the family plan followed, I subscribed and deleted everything. If I didn’t like new music but just relied on a catalog of older music maybe I wouldn’t have gone that route—but even then I think my kids would have wanted access to new music.
Honestly, I like subscription music—I listen to hundreds of new songs every month. I love wireless headphones for exercise. I don’t care about the lack of headphone jack. To me it isn’t enshittification, it is a wonderful product suite that I much prefer to the one I used to use.
When subscription music arrived and then the family plan followed, I subscribed and deleted everything
I’d much rather own it and the storage requirements (‘till HDD death do we part), than rely on a web of licensing and exclusivity arrangements between streaming platforms and labels, which can - and have - been capriciously revoked in a moment. That’s also assuming the service offers the kind of music you like, or has good fidelity. And there’s platform agnostic issues like data connection - when we head up into the mountains I still have my files to play, but my wife is fully dependent upon Spotify and good cell signal.
…but even then I think my kids would have wanted access to new music
And there’s your radically different use case. I value having my music collection and archive, I follow artists throughout their career, and seek out entire albums vs individual tracks. Someone who may not care so deeply or develops a different relationship with music based on playlists or radio hits won’t value the archival aspect as much, because music’s value is temporal.
I think in a different life I might have ended up on your path and I appreciate how much it is the right one for many. I’ll toss out a few more comments (mainly cause I am trying to contribute to Lemmy both monetarily and by not just lurking).
I love the fidelity of Apple Music which is what I use—it is certainly much better than my CD collection ever was. I don’t even bother using the lossless option as I cannot tell the difference. I usually have about 50GB of music sync’d to my devices and my wife and I camp without cell service often.
I carefully curate my music collection. I have about 5000 songs I love neatly sorted into decade playlists plus specialty playlists. I keep a textual backup of my playlists in addition to exported playlist backups to allow me to recover from pretty much any issue including apple account loss.
I rarely see removed songs, but do occasionally see them. Since my library is well curated it is easy to see which tracks are unavailable. I would guess I have been impacted on less than 0.1%.It is extremely rare for me to not find the songs I want on Apple Music, but I have uploaded many tracks to Apple Music that I had to procure from other locations. The most common ones have been live tracks, soundtracks and mixes. At that point they work just like any other music in my library.
It’s been a pretty good experience—not one I would have predicted 20 years ago.
I wasn’t trying to say streaming is wrong, I definitely use it from time to time, and though I trend heavily towards BandCamp and Soulseek I’ll cop to fidelity rarely being important for me outside of certain genres with heavier bass or effects that make flac worthwhile. Generally it’s very diminished returns for bloated file size - especially so on mobile devices and Bluetooth/car playback
I rarely see removed songs, but do occasionally see them. Since my library is well curated it is easy to see which tracks are unavailable. I would guess I have been impacted on less than 0.1%.
I have both fringe and mainstream taste, so I do semi-regularly encounter outright missing artists/groups, or occasionally entire genres, especially so in electronic - that alone is worth the effort of building and managing a collection to me. It is very disappointing to find an artist available via streaming, but not their self released/indie albums because of licensing agreements
It is extremely rare for me to not find the songs I want on Apple Music, but I have uploaded many tracks to Apple Music that I had to procure from other locations.
You can upload your tracks to the cloud storage for later streaming? That’s actually pretty neat, and solves a lot of the ‘wrong’ live version/acoustic rendition/etc problems nicely.
It’s been a pretty good experience—not one I would have predicted 20 years ago.
Tbh same! Looking at the music industry after the vinyl era where pressing was cheaper but albums weren’t, it’s nice that they eventually were dragged kicking and screaming to digital distribution - “piracy is a service problem” and they refused to learn for decades while disruptive competition grew online
Damn I love music! Thanks for sharing your passion with me!
I am pretty impressed that it can power 80ohm Beyers (DT770?). I finally had my old phone die and I was forced to get one without a headphone jack. I listen to music on a little MP3 player called a Mixxtape now. It definitely can’t power my Beyers properly.
Back in the day, I had one that looked like this and was essentially built around an AA battery, which was great since you could always carry a spare.
I used to have one of these to listen to music while walking to school back in the day. It was the first device I hacked the firmware to move the menu options around. It was the perfect size to fit into the breast pocket on school uniforms.
I loved this thing. Bought like three of them in a decade rather than join the iPod universe.
Weren’t those Cowon, or something like that?
Mine was a Samsung IIRC and I remember having to look a while for something with a swappable battery and FLAC support
Nice. Didn’t remember Samsung making some. Mine were Cowon or iRiver (which might actually also be Cowon).
I have this one.
i was explaining to a college student about mp3 players and they thought they sounded like some amazing new product coming down the pipeline. it made me feel super old and super sad for all that tech companies have robbed from us
What were they so impressed by?
thousands of songs on your device with no internet connection and days without recharging
At first I was gonna say you can have thousands of songs on your smartphone regardless, but I guess those kids probably aren’t too acquainted with file browsers.
Not in the slightest, no
I hate that so many devices try hard to obscure filesystems even though they are right there, right under the hood. I remember how ridiculous it was to try and browse an iPod as the hard drive it was. They copied your files into an indecipherable file tree with weird names. If companies aren’t trying to keep you from copying shit then they’re thinking you’re too dumb to understand files and folders and putting some other weird UI on top of them to make them “user friendly”.
And thusly, they made kids unable to understand file browsers/systems :'(
I think at this point it’s a concerted effort to make sure we’re all consumers, not users
👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Sony phones have headphones jacks.
Tmobile stopped supporting my XA2 Ultra and I couldn’t use it with Verizon. F them carriers man.
Don’t use cell service, now it’s just an android mp3 player with wifi.
Any budget phone has them, xiaomi, samsung, oppo, really only “high end” phones dont.
I wanted a Samsung for my most recent phone purchase but I ended up going with Sony because it’s the only one on the market with a jack. Samsung hasn’t had jacks for years, which is a bummer because I miss my Samsung phone. They’re just somehow more responsive and easier to use.
Which Samsung model are you claiming had a jack? I could be wrong.
Galaxy A series, now im doing some research and am not 100% sure, but up to last gen (a 24), they did have them.
I was turned off Sony products somewhere around 1998.
I think people are forgetting you can still buy players like this. -With a mini jack, lots of space, drag and drop to transfer music…
It’s how small things can be when they don’t need a screen
If you google for mp3-players without touchscreen and you open a link like “12 best mp3-players without touchscreen 2025”, you may find maybe one in this list without touchscreen.
Still have my 120G Zune and 16G Zune HD, both of which still work flawlessly. It’s wild to think what we left behind
I gave my (young) son a 16G Zune HD. It lived through a washer/dryer cycle—I don’t understand how.
Have the same in black, doesn’t even need any special software to load songs on it, unlike some other creative products.
I think it started with Apple requiring iTunes for their shitty DRM. The first few could still connect via USB regularly, but all file names were garbled and ID3 tags stripped, so you could technically copy the songs over, but had to manually restore them. From there it just went downhill.
The phone is terrible for listening to music while riding a motorcycle or bicycle.
Impossible to use a touchscreen without looking at it.
Over the years I’ve used a series of cheap players. For the past few years sandisc clip, last I checked discontinued, replaced with something 4 times the price. I have a few different makes & models. I like to give them away as sort of a digital mix tape of a few 1000 songs I need tactile buttons, which I augment with stick on jewels so I can operate with gloves for the pause/play & next song. Ideally single click for either function. My helmets either have headphone pockets or I add them. Wired headphones, no BT disconnect, no dead batteries.
I clip the player to my right lapel so I can change songs without taking my hand off the throttle :D.
The random on everything including ipods sucks, I usually do a bunch of folders with 200-500 files each
I got this for my girlfriend. If I recall it held about 100 CDs worth of music—it had a small hard drive in it. Up until that point she had used a portable CD player in her car. I remember it being a little finicky, but ultimately working well.
I had one of these, they were great devices back then. Really ate through batteries, but 6GB of music on the go was amazing.
I miss Creative. Best computer speakers I ever had. Also when everyone at school was rocking a 4gb iPod they got at the mall for hundreds of dollars and had to choose which music they wanted, I was rocking this puppy for like $100 off of eBay with my entire library on it. Notice it’s 30gb! It also doubled as a portable hard drive. This is back when corporations did everything they could to make a good product. Not too sure, given the quality difference, why apple thrived and companies like creative died.
Check out the Vanatoo t0+ speakers for your PC if you want to be amazed. A little pricey but oh are they absolutely fantastic for music and games.
I have a Rio Volt SP-250. A CD-MP3 player I’ve had since 2001. The in-line remote died somehow but the unit itself works flawlessly and is in excellent condition. It runs on AA batteries; originally they were rechargeable but they were Ni-MH cells. I don’t know where its charger went, but I can run the thing on Alkaline batteries or charge Eneloops in a separate charger.
It long outlasted the iPod it replaced and is still serviceable to this day.
The remote was awesome, when you had a hundred mp3s on a cd it was so easy to navigate. Upgraded to the Rio Volt and then Rio Karma after that, always wished they would use those expansion ports for another remote.
Karma is still one of the best mp3 players ever made. Flac, gapless playback, parametric equalizer, dock, etc. Made the iPhone look like junk except for the control wheel being a bit too easy to break.
I still have the Volt and a couple of Karmas. 128gb compact flash cards are drop in replacements for the HDD so you get even more space and better battery life. Unfortunately the phone is just too convenient to use so they collect dust now.
I pretty much only ever used the remote; I have to keep remembering how to use the main controls.
Fortunately, you can do everything you need to do with just a headset plugged into the device. They didn’t ONLY put the controls on the remote. I’ve seen iPods and a lot of televisions do that.
I do end up using my phone with a set of ANR headphones most of the time, but the time may be rapidly coming when I do away with smart phone life and return to tradition.
Dankpods is that you
“Arming the nug!”
I have an old iPod shuffle. No screen, works as a USB stick, just plug it in, put some songs on, and it works.
