Does nobody use portable digital music players like the iPod or Walkman anymore?

[b]i Do, [/b]I travel in places without good cell service. and am frequently the only guy there that has music with.
My favorite is an old school ipod click wheel, with 180 gigs of room. HUGE for music.

i have also used them, for Dj Like activities.

yeah smartphones + Spotify, pandora and others.. have become very popular, though I for one prefer to curate My own. no fees to pay, no bandwidth used
TBH< i have used the add free Spotify, as a housemate upstairs shares it, i have been surprised at the vast library they have and much hard to find music,
but i note.. those artists receive astonishingly miniscule payments. much less that every other form of recompense

as for your walkman,, the originator of portable music..(remember the cassettes version?)

there is a growing collectors market tho.. I sold as 25 year old desktop recently for 300$ US
i think there is a Reddit thread for this.

I had a cassette Walkman and then a CD Walkman. The sound on those things was great. Now all I have is this tablet and the sound is really tinny even with headphones. Not designed for music.

There is an ad just below this for adult diapers. Some company sure has SW all figured out.

Sadly you would probably be doing good to get $20 for it today. ☹️ Times and technology change rapidly now.

i have an ipod for music only, use it daily for car, work, home.

I still use a CD walkman, no worries about spotty internet when travelling, I don't have to worry about my phone battery dying on me when I need to use it etc, I much prefer it for music to any other device.

I have all my music (currently around 8000 tracks) uploaded to YouTube Music - which is quite similar to Spotify in many ways - so I can listen on my phone, my computer or I can send to my TV

Feels like everything changes year to year with technology anymore.

Yes I mine from the 90s still

It plays cassette tapes and has AM/FM radio

Who needs digital when you got cassette tapes


Photograph is an internet photo

Yes, it's because of smartphones.
I had a 128GB iPod, which died a sad death in a bucket filled with water. When I tried to buy a new one, I had to realize that they aren't produced anymore.
So I bought an iPhone instead, and I'm more than happy about it. Instead of copying music from CDs to the iPod, I subscribed to Apple Music, so I can listen to whatever I want, all the time, always. And it has speakers!
I had three renditions of Wagner's "Parsifal" on my iPod. Apple Music has at least a dozen of Parsifal stagings.

I still use my Ipod Shuffle. Its sad you can't buy these anywhere now...

I had an MP3 player before that. Which had 1/4 the storage of the Ipod. You couldn't just add one song without all of them being erased. So you had to load them all again in one go. Thought they were the newest thing out. But a kid said "What the hecks an MP3?"
I do have another MP3 incase the Ipod ever stops working.

I bought a sandisk version a while back, the idea being that I wouldn't run out my cell phone battery with music and I could keep using all the physical jack audio stuff I have. I think it's the smart phone, if you always have it with you all the time and it can do music already, why not just focus on that? plus you get network availability and a huge range of music available at any time,

Why didn't you return it?

I would if they had an OS. I have at least two old portable music players. The only reason I listen to music from the smartphone now is that I can keep data of what I listen to, when and how many times.

Ah, such is life. I guess I'll donate it and get a tax write-off. Or keep it and let my kids sell it as an antique for double what I bought if for😁

I had a recording Walkman that my girlfriend bought me and I recorded concerts in Vancouver of Jean Luc Ponty, JJ Cale and a few others. I thought they were great

Shoot, Ill take it. I had one about five years ago and I regret it's loss.

I got ya back man,I have a Sansa Sandisk that holds an insane amount of songs..I don't always want to carry my phone

I think keep it... It will be s collectors often , especially if still in the box

Not I. But I did have a transistor radio (not a Sony, however :( ) when I was a teen. It was swell.

I saw a middle aged woman walking around with one last summer. It had speakers attached.

There's no reason to, smartphones make them irrelevant

Because smart phones can stream music 🤷‍♂️

Did see what they go for on eBay, they might go for a higher price to tech collectors.

Id hang onto it .
At some point it's gonna become retro, and then collectable & esp since it's brand new .

They say it takes 40 - 50 years for something to reach that 'retro' stage, ( roughly a generation - although this is just a generalisation).

The only drawback of this particular piece is that it needs tapes. So that makes its audience a bit more refined to audiophiles and retro- tech geeks.

Don't doubt it's value if the sound quality is good.
Highest end amplifiers, with valve technology are sought now by audiophiles, because there is just 'something' about analogue sound that digital doesn't have 🤷

Yeah, it's because many people these days use music streaming services like Spotify on smartphones as opposed to keeping music files like we used to.

Pretty much, yeah. But the thing people don't realize is, when your smartphone starts to go bad, it's a pain in the ass to transfer your entire music collection to your next phone.

I don't consider my Sansa mp3 player obsolete for me

I use it both for music and podcasts ... very rarely I use the FM tuner or the audio recorder ... also bought a cable to connect it to my car stereos auxiliary input jack, because broadcast radio generally sucks in most places, beyond the NPR affiliates and the rare college radio station or KEXP-like community run station

I added Rockbox firmware to it long ago but I'm sure the stock Sansa firmware is fine too

I have no desire to own a smartphone

I still have CD-RW's with over 100 mp3s on them I could use if limited to an mp3-capable CD player