RIP iPod, the MP3 Player That Changed the Way We Listen to Music

The primary time I heard an MP3 file was again in 1995. It was some proto-drum-and-bass observe that I had downloaded to my PC from an FTP web site, again when the online was simply starting to go mainstream. I don’t keep in mind the identify of the track or the artist. However I do keep in mind I used to be surprised at how clear it sounded. It was a full four-minute digital audio observe that, at simply a few megabytes, was additionally sufficiently small to obtain in a couple of minutes over a dial-up connection.

As we speak, excluding a rising band of vinyl fans, everybody listens to digital music. The one largest motive for that’s Apple’s iconic iPod. Nearly in a single day, the iPod was in all places within the aughts, with large billboard adverts, TV commercials, and throngs of individuals in cities with white earbuds of their ears.

Now that Apple is sunsetting the iPod after a 20-year run, it appears becoming to look again at its origin and the way it totally modified the way in which we take heed to music as we speak.

Apple Took Its Time

A flurry of unknown start-ups launched the primary batch of MP3 gamers within the late Nineteen Nineties. They have been cramped by present requirements, with simply 32MB or 64MB of inside reminiscence—sufficient for an album or two’s value of music, or an honest mixtape. Ripping your music to digital recordsdata supplied benefits in contrast with swapping CDs or recording to MiniDiscs; they did not skip, and you can rearrange them nonetheless you want. But it surely was the rise of unlawful file-sharing on Napster, Kazaa, and different peer-to-peer providers that cemented the MP3 as the brand new format of selection. And as the marketplace for MP3 gamers expanded, Artistic Labs, Samsung, and another acquainted names jumped into the fray.

An Apple iBook and iPod circa 2001 (Photograph: Apple Corp. by way of Getty Photographs)

True to type, Apple watched the marketplace for a few years. Then Steve Jobs introduced the glossy new iPod on October 23, 2001, a tough left flip for a corporation nonetheless largely identified for its Macintosh, together with the colourful new iMac line, and a large faceplant within the handheld PDA market.

The iPod was remarkably costly at $399, and solely labored with Macs. But it surely additionally had an impressively roomy 5GB 1.8-inch arduous drive. This meant that as an alternative of 10 or 20 songs, it may put 1,000 songs in your pocket, as the unique advert went—no different MP3 participant on the time got here shut. That was a very good portion of the typical music lover’s CD assortment, and definitely greater than a zippered case filled with cassettes.

With the iPod, you continue to needed to rip all of your CDs to your laptop utilizing Apple’s iTunes software program. But it surely meant you can take heed to any of your favourite songs on a whim. Apple continued to refine the iPod over the subsequent couple of years, introducing Home windows compatibility (an enormous step) and the good Click on Wheel design. The corporate additionally started reducing the worth and providing new variations that have been smaller, had coloration screens that would play video, or had more and more capacious arduous drives.

Steve Jobs introducing new iPods in 2005 (Photograph: Kimberly White/Corbis by way of Getty Photographs)

The Introduction of Shopping for Digital Music

The opposite huge piece of the puzzle was Apple’s 2003 introduction of the iTunes Music Retailer, which modified the music trade in a single day. It meant you can purchase a 99-cent single as an alternative of a whole album, lots of which usually value $15 to $18 and solely had one or two good songs. This determination—and the behind-the-scenes scramble and chronic work to get all of the extraordinarily reluctant main labels on board—was key to launching the iPod into the stratosphere. Clients lastly had a straightforward means to purchase music legally and on their phrases. Far more than even the iMac, the iPod reversed Apple’s decline and despatched the corporate’s fortunes skyrocketing.

Inside the span of some years, folks went from primarily shopping for CDs or illegally sharing music on Napster, Kazaa, and different now-defunct providers, to purchasing music on-line via Apple. Competing providers sprang up, however for a very long time, none may put a dent in Apple’s lead.

Artistic Zen Micro MP3 Gamers at CES 2005 in Las Vegas (Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Photographs)

I spent the mid-2000s reviewing varied MP3 gamers for various know-how publications, from manufacturers like Archos, Cowon, Artistic, iRiver, Sony, and Toshiba. Many have been fairly good, however often let down by their buggy third-party software program, and even by Microsoft Home windows Media Participant and its clumsy DRM. Compared, Apple’s iTunes software program labored completely with the iPod, even when linked to Home windows PCs (for a time, at the very least). All you needed to do was sync up with the wire every time you needed so as to add new music or new playlists.

The iPod additionally discovered its means into vehicles. In 2004, BMW launched the primary in-vehicle iPod integration, an innovation that different automakers shortly copied. It was an enormous advance over messy cassette-tape adapters in your moveable CD participant, and even trunk-mounted CD changers from the Nineteen Nineties.

In tandem with the rise of the iPod, a whole market of third-party equipment cropped up with all method of circumstances, aftermarket earbuds, and alarm clocks and speaker docks that additionally charged the iPod. Stereo methods not meant giant racks of elements or gaudy mini-systems swathed in silver plastic, with “XXXTREME BASS” in all caps plastered to the speaker grilles. Now, a stereo system might be a single speaker that was infinitely extra compact and but mission sound throughout the room (though it did not sound very stereo). Bose’s SoundDock turned the preferred, however JBL, Logitech, and plenty of others made aggressive fashions, lots of which value much less. These third-party equipment all contributed to Apple’s backside line, because of the requisite licensing charges for the proprietary 30-pin iPod connector.

Audiophiles nonetheless most popular the sound of lossless CD rips to 128Kbps and even 256Kbps music recordsdata (fortunately, Amazon MP3 nudged Apple and the remainder of the trade to better-sounding codecs within the late 2000s). However more and more, folks moved their collections over to digital. It was simply too handy to disregard. iTunes meant you can arrange your total music assortment in your laptop and make untold numbers of playlists for moods, actions, days of the week, nostalgia, or no matter different methods you needed. You possibly can even unload all of your CDs.

The Logitech Pure-Fi Elite, a superb speaker dock I reviewed in 2007

The Rise of Streaming and Wi-fi Audio

Apple saved going within the late 2000s, constructing out the iPod nano line with flash storage after cornering the world’s provide of NAND flash. At the same time as extra folks started to hold so-called “sensible” telephones just like the Palm Treo and Motorola Q that would play MP3s, many customers (together with me) caught with their iPods, which turned ever smaller and continued to work with speaker docks and an growing variety of automotive stereos with iPod connectors.

Then the world began to cross the iPod by. Apple’s more and more bloated iTunes software program was a part of the rationale, as Cupertino stuffed music movies, film leases, discovery algorithms, and even social networking into its important music app. A number of us bemoaned iTunes’ more and more precarious state within the opinions of the day. However the two fundamental culprits that did within the iPod have been wi-fi and streaming audio.

The primary was straightforward to foretell, as a result of Apple did it to itself with the iPhone. Launched in 2007, the iPhone did all the things the iPod did and labored precisely the identical means, besides with a contact display screen as an alternative of the Click on Wheel. Why carry two gadgets if you happen to may carry only one that doubles as your cellphone? Positive, it took a number of years for iPhones to choose up sufficient storage capability to match hard-drive-equipped iPods, and for wi-fi Bluetooth audio system to catch as much as iPod speaker docks in sound high quality, selection, and value. However the writing was already on the wall for wired iPods.

The Bose SoundLink Mini II, one among many Bluetooth audio system

The opposite offender, the rise of streaming providers, took longer to mature. Pandora and Slacker excelled at web radio, however changing your music library and playlists was a a lot more durable drawback. Many early subscription-based entries (together with Napster, which tried and didn’t rebrand) had spotty music catalogs and prohibitive, usually buggy DRM. Spotify modified all that. Why trouble downloading and ripping MP3s when you can play something you needed at any time you needed for a low month-to-month payment, and nonetheless make as many playlists as you needed? Quickly, Apple rebranded iTunes as Apple Music to catch up.

Put these two improvements collectively—wi-fi and streaming—and it spelled the top for the iPod.

Apple Music, which the corporate launched in 2015

Sundown of the iPod

I grew up within the days of document and tape collections. CDs supplied “good sound ceaselessly,” as was claimed on the format’s 1982 introduction. (At the very least till they received scratched an excessive amount of; then they supplied “horribly skipping sound ceaselessly.”) And previously 12 months, each Spotify and Apple Music lastly caught as much as Tidal and eventually started streaming music at full CD-quality, in 16-bit, 44.1kHz lossless, though whether or not you are really listening to that could be a totally different query.

As we speak, streaming providers offer you entry to all the things. This has its drawbacks; for starters, it not seems like your music. You possibly can nonetheless make playlists, however nothing prevents Spotify or Apple from altering the model of the track you hear, or from even pulling it fully. I assumed this may be a deal breaker, nevertheless it seems that most individuals don’t care about personalised music collections (Excessive Constancy be damned)—it issues extra that you just by no means have to purchase albums or songs ever once more. And naturally, it is simpler to handle playlists on streaming providers than bouncing recordsdata backwards and forwards between gadgets and computer systems.

A few of us additionally miss the blissful isolation of simply listening to music, with a tool that may solely play music, and never additionally infest your afternoon with doomscrolling or notifications or numerous different interruptions that imply you by no means absolutely detach from something, even for a couple of minutes. (I am high-quality, actually.) A thriving fanatic marketplace for used and basic iPods has already blossomed.

However ultimately, what appeared like a complete impossibility within the mid-2000s has lastly come to cross: The iPod has outlived its usefulness. Its demise marks a pure bookend to an incredible period of transformation, each within the music trade and in the way in which all of us take heed to music.