For three terrifying weeks, I lost my iPod Nano somewhere on campus.
In these three weeks, I tried to live in the 21st century. I downloaded Spotify on my phone. I dug through my Youtube playlists. For the first time in ten years, my earphones resided in my phone’s jack.
I caved in under a week and bought a cheap MP3 player from Wal-Mart.
Thankfully, the campus police had located my iPod three weeks later and held it in their office for me to pick up. Actually, a friend got it for me while also picking up her lost Fitbit (“hey, uh, you’re the only person who still owns an iPod on campus, did you happen to be listening to Childish Gambino when you lost it?”), but that’s besides the point. The relief I felt when my sleek, small iPod was returned to my hands knocked me over like a wave.
A lot of people like to ask me why I’m still using an MP3 player in 2018. By now, everyone has moved on to the world of iPhones and Spotify. And for most people, these are great options! But if you’re anything like me, an MP3 player might actually be your best bet. Apparently, a lot of people agree with me. And did you know that they still make Walkmans? Or that Nanos like mine are still produced and sold? What’s with this blatant disregard for the changing landscape of music?
Here are some reasons to still use an MP3 player in 2018:
(Source)
1) You’ve been curating your iTunes library since the 2000s and damned if you’re going to stop now
I’ve had the same iTunes library since I was ten years old. Of course, a lot of songs have been checked and rechecked, but I still have thousands of songs in my library that I’m not willing to let go of. I don’t want to lose my treasure trove of songs just because I’ve grown up and have an Android. And I don’t think my Galaxy’s data could take the hit of suddenly getting 3,000+ songs transferred to it. It’s struggling to re-download Tumblr, for God’s sake. And I want to use my SD card for other things like photos, apps, etc. Simply put, I don’t want to overburden my phone with music, but I also don’t want to go through the process of trimming down my library.
I know people who still have their original, brick-of-an-iPods that are pushing five thousand songs with room for more. Hats off to them.
2) Spotify just doesn’t do it for you
Spotify is an amazing app, but five dollars a month can go a long way in a year’s worth of college, especially if you’re like me and the budget’s tight (and besides, you can just mooch off of your friends for the free Hulu). The free desktop version is impeccable, but becomes pretty useless in its free mobile form–limited skips, not being able to turn off shuffle, ads, and more. Things get more complicated if you’re a snob like me and you listen to a lot of “underground” music–chances are that awesome garage remix you just found on Bandcamp is not going to be on Spotify, paid or not. How about video game music? Spotify often has limited (if any) options if you want to listen to your favorite track from a game you’ve been playing recently. Or how about covers of famous songs sung by not-so-famous-people? Yes, Spotify, I know that Carly Rae Jepsen sings “Warm Blood”, but what about that super cool acoustic cover I saw of it on Youtube? If you’re a fan of certain genres, Spotify just might not cater to you, even with its size.
3) You don’t want to drain your phone battery
Maybe you’ve got a huge SD card loaded into your phone, and you’re not afraid to fill it up with every album imaginable. Maybe Spotify is the perfect fit for you. But can your battery handle of that? I will sometimes have my Nano on for four to five hours straight during particularly rough study sessions. Not only would that be a huge strain on my phone’s battery, but even the best of phones will burn up like a hot potato during such nonstop heavy usage, which actually accelerates how fast your phone dies. I also know that if I leave my Nano playing music in my pocket, I will only lose about a quarter of my battery. The same can’t be said of leaving music running in the background of a phone (and we all know that your phone chooses to die when there’s nowhere to plug in your charger, or the one day you forgot your battery pack!).
4) You’re a huge sound buff
Electronics lesson time! Do you know the difference between lossy and lossless audio? Lossy audio is what most phones tend to use when storing music. It means that the audio is compressed and downsized in order to save room, which is important on a device with a bunch of other things loaded onto it. For the most part, however, MP3 players are solely dedicated to music, and therefore save music in a lossless format. This means that the audio is not compressed, thus leaving the sound quality intact. Some people don’t care about this difference in quality, others do.* It’s all down to individual preference. But give lossless format a listen and see how you feel!
*It’s also worth mentioning that this difference is more noticeable the higher quality your headphones/earplugs are, if you’re using Beats, lossless audio will sound crisper, whereas using eight-dollar Skullcandys will probably make everything sound lossy.
5) It’s nice to physically own your music
Don’t get me wrong. I own an iPod, but none of my music comes from the Apple Store. It comes from albums I’ve purchased, rented from the library, or acquired by…slightly illegitimate means (listen, if it plays on the radio, they don’t need my money). Spotify can decide to pull the plug on your favorite album at any point. Apple Music wants you to pay ten dollars a month to stream music without increasing the data capability of their devices, which I can’t help but feel isn’t a coincidence (yes, I know, time to pull out the tinfoil hats). In fact, even if you buy the music through iTunes, you still don’t technically own it, Apple does, and the same goes for downloading digital music from any major online marketplace. Meaning that the company can control the file and how it’s used. Which is an uncomfortable prospect!
Long story short? You will pry my iPod Nano from my cold, dead, caveman-like hands.
(Featured: me listening to my Nano while writing this article)
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