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Do people still use MP3 players?

The beauty of the MP3 player is that it is a one-trick pony - it plays MP3s. No cell phone, no email, no internet, just music.

I have a few old iPods that still see regular use. Mowing and yardwork, walking the dog, even a drive where I don't want to have my phone but I want to control the music.

I also have an old iPad that stays attached to the AuxIn on my practice amp. All it has on it are music apps - nothing else to distract me while I'm playing.
 
My phone is my portable MP3 player. Its one of the reasons why I use Android because it acts as a flash drive when plugged into a computer as opposed to having to go through the iTunes step.

In my car, I use a 16gig and a 64gig flash drive.......Hours upon hours of complete discographies as well as my own stuff
 
i have a significant digital library of music. iphone holds it all.

there 100% was an awkward moment of transition where mp3 players (ipods) went out of style, but the phones at the time did not have the type of storage that huge music libraries needed. that was years ago. I don't have the latest iphone, i'm still on an 8, and have never even come close to running out of storage.

just use a phone. it's so much easier.
 
i have a significant digital library of music. iphone holds it all.

there 100% was an awkward moment of transition where mp3 players (ipods) went out of style, but the phones at the time did not have the type of storage that huge music libraries needed. that was years ago. I don't have the latest iphone, i'm still on an 8, and have never even come close to running out of storage.

just use a phone. it's so much easier.
exactly. couldn't agree more, well said.
 
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The smarter, more advanced phone has replaced a lot of things, not just the MP3 player.
Remember the Franklin Planner, then the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) after that?
Remember when you had to have a watch on your wrist to know what time it was (I know, the smart watch is now replacing the smart phone)?
Remember when you had portable digital cameras or video recorders?
Remember when you had to go to your computer to check emails?

It doesn’t seem all that long ago when you had all these different devices. Things change...rapidly.

I don’t have any music, or access to steaming on my smartphone. It belongs to my employer and against policy to have that stuff. I do not have a personal phone or see a need for one.

I do still have my iPod Classic 160 GB with thousands of songs on it that I use for a lot of stuff...I also have my CD collection that I occasionally listen to when the mood strikes me.

Sometimes the old stuff is still good stuff; heck, I still rock my 65’ Jazz Bass through my 70’ Bassman 100 and love the way it works.
 
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I used to buy MP3 players up until roughly 10 years ago and I loved them. But after a while they became harder to find. As in, finding them in stores.

Did a better method come along? Such as Spotify or some kind of online storage?

I still like the idea of a smaller device dedicated to music that is light and easy to carry.

To be honest, I've gone back to traditional radio. Yes, for 10 years. But if I could find a good player to hold lots of music, maybe hundreds of albums. Or perhaps a way of selecting a dozen albums at a time, and then switching them out each day. If that's easy to do.

I'd even be open to online options, none of which I have used, with the exception of youtube.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I'm definitely not the norm, but I used my phone, and then when I got a new phone, I converted my old one to a mp3 player.

My personal digital collection is in excess of 3,000 records (I'm not exactly sure how many at this point). I still purchase albums digitally because I want to own them and not be beholden to some streaming service. I backup my audio library to my physical data backup whenever I add new albums to it, and have done so for more than a decade. Streams are typically at lower quality audio than I prefer too, so that's a thing too.

My phone/player is 64 gigs, so I'm carrying 400+ albums with me wherever I drive. I swap stuff out pretty frequently. I have android and use mediamonkey mobile as the player, as I use the desktop version as my music management.
 
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Started using these when they first came out:
Gigaware MP# playerFxd.jpg


Ended up buying a few more used ones each year for a while, maxing them out with micro SD chip adders......have about 10 of them. 2 are duplicates of each other with complete sets of 400+ "must know for band" songs in alphabetical order. One is full of my favorite youtube videos(yes these play video).
183.0US $ |American original GIDAWARE Lossless MP3 players support 4G 8G MP4 APE good quality artifacts|mp3 sport player|player mp3 playerplayer mp3 - AliExpress

ebay seems to have the smaller versions of this one for ridiculous prices.....hmmmmm.....maybe I can unload a few of mine.
gigaware mp3 player | eBay
 
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My iPhone supplanted my MP3 player. All my CD's were ripped into iTunes and uploaded to my phone. Couple that with Spotify, and I've got access to a vast library of music.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the prevalence of smart phones is why MP3 players are essentially obsolete.

Ha, Ha! I remember, burning a whole weekend, ripping my cd collection in Itunes! ugh! Before when you had look for album art& cat.Info yourself,Ahh the good old days! now you cant find a cd drive let alone a mp3 player!! I got 2 dvd burners collecting dust in a closet! idk where my Ipod is!
 
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I modded an iPod classic 5.5 gen to use 256gb on sd cards and love it! But I’ve always been into technology that’s passé. I’m starting to re-rip my CDs as FLAC and still have plenty of room on my iPod. I also use Spotify, but not everything I want is on streaming.
I did the same with an 80 GB iPod Classic (to 120 GB). It was a bear getting the thing apart, but I got the SD card kit in and it works. The kit + card was about $60.
EDIT: The bonus is that it made the iPod considerably lighter, and since there's not moving parts, it uses less power so the battery lasts longer.
I still use an iPod. The only thing I don’t like about it is the ridiculously short battery life.
Sounds like it's time to replace the battery. You can get them pretty cheap online. They come with the tools for getting the iPod apart.

For me, it's nice having a dedicated music player that can hold my entire CD collection. I have a lot of music that are either out of print or it's highly unlikely to be available to stream. Plus I can create playlists to my tastes and listen to entire albums if I want. It's what I usually listen to in my car.
 
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