arguments for switching to an mp3 player
a month ago i bought a refurbished pink ipod mini from ebay. it came to me all the way from china and arrived in my mailbox a few days before my top surgery date. the timing was perfect; i had just enough time to load up a few songs for my surgery waiting room playlist to ease my nerves beforehand, and then i would have two weeks while i was at home recovering to get on my ytmp3 grind and download the rest of my 2000+ songs one by one. by the time i was back at work i could fully make the switch away from streaming and solely use the ipod to listen to music on my commute, during my lunch break, at the gym, etc.
and i love it so much. it's not only helped me use my phone for one less thing and thereby preserve it's battery life for longer, it's also changed the way i listen to music, increased the level of attention and appreciation i have for the music that i listen and forced me to be way more intentional about what i listen to and what i choose to download. at this point i've stopped using streaming entirely and despite all the seeming inconveniences of downloading and editing the metadata and organizing songs one by one and then waiting for them to sync to the mp3 player, i don't have any desire to go back to streaming.
my immediate reasons for buying an ipod were mostly frustrations with streaming and having to *be on my phone* to listen. the place i listen to music most often is on my subway commutes, and that's also where cell signal is weakest. i had set up my music library so that every song i added to a playlist was automatically downloaded, but i'd notice that even songs that were marked as downloaded would still lag or grey out if the signal was bad, and sometimes songs that i clearly remembered downloading would somehow be marked as undownloaded. much i later realized i had unknowingly had a setting applied that automatically offloaded downloaded music to optimize storage space. i also listen to a lot of regional indian and pakistani music and some of it frequently gets taken off streaming sites, i'm assuming due to licensing issues, but this unreliability frustrated me. why was i subscribing to a paid service (ok it's really a family plan my parents pay for so i get it for free but still) that promised unlimited access to all the world's music, if i couldn't even rely on a handful of songs to remain accessible offline?
the other big issue with streaming for me was that it required my phone to be actively on. and because i was so habituated to multitasking and scrolling, i very rarely simply listened without doing anything else. a text tone cutting through the song would steal my attention for the next few minutes, or i'd passively have songs i didn't particularly even enjoy anymore playing in the background while i mindlessly cycled back and forth between a few different apps. or i'd be actively editing my playlists instead of enjoying what was currently playing. by the time i got off my phone i wouldn't remember what i just listened to and i wouldn't have done anything particularly meaningful on the other apps on my phone either. but it was a habit i couldn't break. because having my music library on my phone necessitated having my phone turned on, i couldn't pull myself away from it. there was always something else on there calling for my attention and time.
the final argument in favor of streaming that i considered when making the switch to an mp3 player was that streaming was supposed to make it infinitely easier to discover new music. how was i supposed to find new artists if not for the apple music curated friends mix or chill mix or get up mix or new music mix or the personalized radio stations? i never truly listened to or particularly liked the music suggested to me in all these playlists and stations, but the fear of missing out on future great music without having to to the active work of looking for artists and albums i enjoy myself was enough to keep me on streaming for longer than i wanted to be.
when i said that switching to an ipod completely changed how i listen to music, i wasn't exaggerating. to those unfamiliar with the ipod mini, here's a photo:
it's smaller than a phone, has a clickwheel to scroll through the menus and change volume with five tactile buttons to select, play/pause, forward, and rewind, and most importantly: a simple black and grey pixel screen with an backlight option that's incapable of displaying color, let alone album artwork or autoscrolling lyrics or clips from music videos or ads. here's a lock switch at the top to disable the clickwheel so that the buttons don't get clicked in your pocket. it doesn't have a speaker or wifi or bluetooth capabilities. it's also got 64gb of storage and you can get models with up to 120gb which is more than enough for me.
one of the biggest changes i've noticed is that i pay so much more attention to my music now; i listen more closely to the vocals, the instruments used, the melodies, how the volume changes throughout the song, i notice new things about songs i've listened to so many times before that i never noticed before because i was always doing something else on the side. the extreme simplicity of the hardware is so refreshing to use. it doesn't need to have a lot going on precisely because it's not made to be looked at. the display shows only what you need and the backlight can be turned off when not in use, or permanently. i don't find myself scrolling on the side because there's no capability to do that on the device.
i had the lucky timing to have two weeks off from work to focus on pirating all my songs and editing the metadata and reorganizing everything into the correct playlists and genres, and while i find the repetitive organizational aspect of this enjoyable and a good low brainpower surgery recovery activity, i was also only going to put in the work of searching up the song, downloading it, editing the song title, adding the album and artist names, genre, year of release, etc for songs that i actively wanted to listen to. i had about two thousand songs in my apple music library and i cut this number down to ~1200 when downloading things to my ipod because there were so many songs in there that i either didn't like enough, only listened to once or twice, only added because they were popular, or just weren't to my taste anymore. when i was using streaming i could never put my entire library on shuffle because i'd skip a majority of the songs that came on. nowadays, i can put my entire ipod library on shuffle, and when i skip songs it's because i'm not in the mood for that particular tempo or genre at the moment, not because i just don't enjoy the song in general.
there's also a delayed gratification in this process because in order to add new music, i have to listen to it on youtube or soundcloud first to decide if i like it enough to download, then wait until i have a chunk of free time at home to open my laptop and sit down and download the file, add the metadata, and then plug in my my ipod and wait for it to sync up. i can't add new music right when it's released, and this makes me more excited to listen to new albums for the first time. i've found myself rediscovering the small joys of intentionally listening to music as an activity on it's own that i haven't experienced since i was a teenager.
and then there's the audio quality improvements: there's never a lag or latency, the audio sounds the same regardless of if i'm at home or in the subway or in a basement. it has the same basic sound check and equalizer features that the iphone has. if the quality ever sounds off, it's because the file i downloaded was funky, not because of a weak cell signal or shaky bluetooth connection. it only works with wired earphones so i never have to worry about my earbuds running out of battery mid commute and then having to deal with subway screech noises for half an hour.
the wired earbuds also force me to listen to music less often. while this might sound like a contradiction, it makes me more excited to listen to music when i do get to plug in. when i used bluetooth earbuds, i'd forget to take them out when i got home, and end up passively listening to stuff in the background while going about my tasks. i ended up in a state of constant noise for hours after i got home, and when you listen to music nonstop just to have some stimulation, it really becomes just noise. but this was also bad for me in a similar way to nonstop scrolling. the continued presence of some sort of external stimulation going on meant that i didn't have downtime to actually think my thoughts fully. this combined with my nonstop scrolling and content consuming meant that all my thoughts would come rushing back to me at once when it was time to go to bed, and i couldn't sleep because i was overwhelmed with all the reminders, observations, tasks, and mental notes i'd gathered through the day and not processed fully in the moment. an huge effect of disconnecting in various ways that i've experienced so far is that i sleep deeper and better now, and getting an ipod has been part of allowing that to occur because it compartmentalizes music and makes it not just another form of endless content to consume, but an intentional activity.
sure, the ipod is an inconvenience compared to streaming. it takes more time and effort to load up songs to the device, you can't delete songs or edit playlists on the device itself, you have to do it separately on your laptop and then sync it up. it takes a few minutes to sync. it's an extra gadget to carry around. you cant look at lyrics or album art. but these small inconveniences make the experience of listening to music so much more intentional, enjoyable, and just better. and i don't have to be on my phone for any of it. i truly have no regrets in making the switch, i don't miss streaming at all and i don't see myself going back anytime soon.
what i'm listening to most recently; abdullah siddiqui's album bad music. i'm not very inclined to sad music, but the electropop production is so different from the usual droopy mopey sad music music i've heard in the past
