music players, nostalgia and freedom (?)

Early 2024, I got excited about physical music players again after being a long time spotify user. I ended up somewhat impulsively buying an iPod nano 6th gen. This coincided with an old favorite of mine, a russian post-rock band called Mooncake, having disappeared from spotify. To be honest, I can't remember which happened first but it certainly made me more inclined to have all my favorites as mp3's on my iPod. It was also just fun to listen to music without being on the internet.

I quickly got really into ipods and music downloading. Soulseek and nicotine+, p2p music sharing platforms, were fun are still surprisingly active. I even bought music (:O) on bandcamp. I was also able to fix my ipod after one of the buttons broke, which was really cool. All this was so exciting that I got another one, the newest nano. And when I filled all 16GB that one had one week ago, I got the 5th gen classic with a 128GB SD card mod. Finally, I could have all music I actually want to listen on a single device.

Today, the iPod classic broke. I tried to turn it on and it just showed me a pixelated picture of an ipod with a sad smiley :(! This made me question the whole music player thing. Did I just like buying new gadgets? Or rather, old gadgets that remind me of the good old times™? Old man yells at cloud??

Well, kinda. There's a coat of nostalgia, and the latent consumerism we live in creeps into most hobbies. But a few things still remain:

• Spotify or other corporations cannot take away your music. I can have my mooncake and GYBE forever.
• I can decide whether, how much and to whom I pay for music.
• I have access to obscure, unpublished and/or not serious music that just doesn't end up on streaming services.
• I can listen to music without the distractions and privacy concerns of having an online device on me at all times.

Some of these compound. Crowsourcing archives music that is unprofitable to keep on the streaming servers. A substantial proportion of people giving their money to their loved artists instead of Spotify top 10 would be good for artists and music as a whole. But I find the benefits already quite compelling from the point of view of an individual.

Of course, you can't get everything. There are some downsides:

• It is a bit of a hassle even if you try to make it as easy as possible.
• Sometimes some music isn't available
• It is not immune to consumerism, buying a lot of old gadgets is tempting

So far, I think it's worth the tradeoff. I'll just need to fix the iPod classic, sell it, and focus on the music once again.