The iPod: How I learned to start loving music again
It's no secret that music makes up a significant portion of our lives nowadays. I'm personally not sure if I'd be able to tolerate hours of debugging my coursework in total silence, so you can bet that most, if not all of the time, I've got headphones on or earbuds in, probably blasting some sort of progressive house or trance at full whack.
And, like almost everyone else, I've been using Spotify Premium. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, Spotify isn't always great. My main gripe is that the app uses way too many features to try and get you to listen to new music, which in my case, leads to the opposite intended effect, meaning I almost always stick with my liked songs. The "Smart Shuffle" feature recommends all kinds of random artists that aren't my vibe, for example, and it's all too easy to enable it by accident when skipping tracks (which I do way too often).
And yes, I dislike the fact I don't actually own any of the music I save! Nothing stops streaming services from nuking your favourite artist, TV show or movie.
Enter the iPod.
Arguably the predecessor to music streaming (at least if you ignore the fact the Zune had a go at streaming), Apple may have discontinued this line of devices, but many people will tell you that it's had a resurgence, "Write off the iPod at your peril", says DankPods. After watching a few dozen of his videos, I decided to pick up a broken 6th generation iPod Classic off eBay for about £25.
Overall, fixing an iPod is a fairly simple task. Common points of failure include worn batteries, scratched up cases, and dead hard drives, all of which can be easily replaced. My iPod exhibited all of these symptoms, so I replaced each of the respective parts. I even upgraded the storage to 128GB from the 60GB that came stock (I'd go further if it weren't for the fact the 6th generation iPod only supports up to 128GB).
Need to replace a dead hard drive? iFlash sells adapters that let you swap in an SD or CF card, commonly known as "Flash Modding".
For replacing basically any other component of an iPod Classic, Elite Obsolete is your one-stop shop.
(I'm not affiliated with either of these sites, I just think they sell cool stuff.)
Your favourite tracks! On a Compact Disk!
Now comes the question of obtaining music. Many artists still release albums on CD, and getting your hands on one is as simple as ordering off the internet, or popping into your local music shop. In fact, if you're looking to own your music, I'd argue that CDs are the perfect choice of media, not only because they're cheap (I'm talking as low as £2 for a used copy of older albums), but their sound quality is about three times better than that of Spotify, in terms of bitrate.
And getting the music onto your shiny new iPod is very straightforward. You can still get iTunes on Windows 11 through the Microsoft Store, plug in any old external disk drive, stick your CD in it, and have it ripped and in your library within minutes. You can then go into the music folder on your computer and back up the resulting files, and/or plug in your iPod, which will sync all of your music straight away. Using a flash modded iPod makes the process extremely fast!
My only gripe with iTunes is that in order to obtain album artwork, you need to be logged in with an Apple ID, something I was willing to do, except I wasn't able to register. Even then, if you're reluctant to use iTunes, you can mod your iPod with Rockbox, and drag-and-drop mp3s easily.
But why is it better?
First off, zero distractions. Listening to music on your phone or laptop, it's nearly inevitable that you'll get distracted by texts, emails or just spam notifications from some random app you've never used. On an iPod, it's just you and your music. Sure, you could enable "Do not disturb" on your phone, but you can just as easily pick up your phone to skip a track, only to find yourself doom-scrolling for hours on end yet again.
Second, you get more reliability. Even with a decent phone, sometimes the Spotify app just doesn't work. In fact, in my experience, sometimes the app just doesn't do anything when you tap a song. That literally renders the app useless! And of course, if you stream your music, when your internet cuts out, poof! Your music goes. The iPod doesn't connect to the internet, it can't. All of your music is already on the device, and the software is so incredibly basic that it works out of the box. (Remember the days when all software was like that?)
Now, this last point may only apply to me, but this also promotes me to explore more music. This is because my newfound interest in hunting down CDs means I'm perusing shelves of discs, or hunting for albums on the web, rather frequently. Sometimes a certain album will catch my eye, so I think, "why not", and decide to bring it with me. This is even more the case at car boot sales or charity shops, who have deals like three CDs for a pound. It's through this that I've discovered hidden gems from artists I already like, dipped into new genres, and picked up the odd tune that catches my fancy!
It's also through this newfound hobby of mine that I've discovered I much prefer listening to albums, rather than playlists, as the overall mood and genre stays the same, while still providing enough variety which prevents things from sounding repetitive. Mixes are especially good at this. So, if like me, you'd like to get one more subscription out of your life, try browsing your favourite online shopping sites for old, used CDs, fix up an old iPod, and start listening like it's 2007.