It’s a Creative Zen Stone that I got as a Christmas gift in 2008. I just found it in a drawer, and it’s still holding charge. The last thing I put on it was The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen, in 2015 – I don’t know why, at that time I definitely had a smartphone.

It has a headphone jack, which immediately makes it better than every smartphone produced in the last several years, and it can easily drive my 80-ohm Beyerdynamic. The audio quality is as good as one can expect. The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB… my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.

Let me reiterate that this has been sitting untouched for a decade and was immediately ready for action. No login, no annoying software updates, expired subscription, or remote bricking by the manufacturer. Eat my shorts, Spotify Car Thing.

P.s. A Lifetime Of Adventure is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k

      • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.comEnglish
        87·
        12 days ago

        most people don’t care

        lol, what a bad chain of takes. Most people care but what can anyone do against a trillion dollar company

        • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          202·
          12 days ago

          Not continue to demand. Not purchase the unethical Google, the low value Apple and the enshittified Samsung. By purchasing products from corrupt capital-obsessed corporations, people are signifying that they don’t care. The good news is that the amount of people choosing ethics over greed is increasing.
          *capital as in monetary value, capitalism

          Of course, the most problematic companies have income from so many integral sources that it’s impossible to fully boycott unless everyone along the chain does the same. Google’ primary income is advertising, so block all ads. Amazon’s is AWS, that serves internet for millions of systems, and the hardest to avoid.

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          5·
          10 days ago

          hit up amazon, search mp3 players

          There’s probably a hundred options. With Screens, without screens, can play video, 60GB, 80GB, 128GB.

          You can EASILY still buy what we used to have (mostly even better) for $20-$40

          You can still buy phones with headphone jacks.

          At a point, collectively, we cared. We all bought at least a few things that eschewed enshittification. But eventually, for most, wireless headphones and not spending time curating our music won out for most.

          I still have all my shit downloaded. Playlists on fleek. I stream it to myself now but could easily copy it to my phone.

          But I don’t have an itch to have a stand-alone MP3 player anymore. Nor a pocket camera.

          If pressed, i’d consider making an mp3 player out of an ESP32, but there’d have to be a compelling reason for me to do it.

          • encore@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            6 days ago

            I get it, I used to love standalone MP3 players too, but streaming from my phone is just easier now. I still have all my music saved. Unless there’s a real need, like fixing a white screen issue or something unique, building one with an ESP32 doesn’t feel worth it.

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
      131·
      11 days ago

      Controversial opinion: while enshittification does exist (from ‘value engineering’ or feature regression) because the profit motive, this imo is more a case of the userbase getting what they ask for. Normies who aren’t super tech literate and know how to navigate a PC, weren’t buying early mp3 players like iRivers, because it wasn’t accessible. You had to:

      1. Have a PC
      2. Know how to use that PC to either rip from CDs to mp3 or acquire mp3s
      3. Know how to sync files - most of these early devices were basically generic USB storage
      4. Know that these players exist, and be willing to spend a lot (for the era) on them compared to a cassette/CD player

      Until the iPod hit the scene, nobody had solved #2 (iTunes store), #3 (iTunes), and #4 (Apple marketing) at the same time. #1 was a timing issue, as digitization increased and home PC prices dropped the userbase wasn’t as large yet. The devices downgraded because the broader userbase doesn’t ask/use the extra features, they want convenience and to not have to think. And as they are the demand segment for industry, so goes the product - dumb it down and mass market it.

      • panicnow@lemmy.world
        41·
        11 days ago

        I feel like my opinion is more controversial. I knew how to do all those things. I helped orchestrate a gigantic CD rip and swap using “lab” work computer equipment at a time when hard drive space was very expensive. I knew how to download files before Napster. When subscription music arrived and then the family plan followed, I subscribed and deleted everything. If I didn’t like new music but just relied on a catalog of older music maybe I wouldn’t have gone that route—but even then I think my kids would have wanted access to new music.

        Honestly, I like subscription music—I listen to hundreds of new songs every month. I love wireless headphones for exercise. I don’t care about the lack of headphone jack. To me it isn’t enshittification, it is a wonderful product suite that I much prefer to the one I used to use.

        • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
          2·
          11 days ago

          When subscription music arrived and then the family plan followed, I subscribed and deleted everything

          I’d much rather own it and the storage requirements (‘till HDD death do we part), than rely on a web of licensing and exclusivity arrangements between streaming platforms and labels, which can - and have - been capriciously revoked in a moment. That’s also assuming the service offers the kind of music you like, or has good fidelity. And there’s platform agnostic issues like data connection - when we head up into the mountains I still have my files to play, but my wife is fully dependent upon Spotify and good cell signal.

          …but even then I think my kids would have wanted access to new music

          And there’s your radically different use case. I value having my music collection and archive, I follow artists throughout their career, and seek out entire albums vs individual tracks. Someone who may not care so deeply or develops a different relationship with music based on playlists or radio hits won’t value the archival aspect as much, because music’s value is temporal.

          • panicnow@lemmy.world
            2·
            10 days ago

            I think in a different life I might have ended up on your path and I appreciate how much it is the right one for many. I’ll toss out a few more comments (mainly cause I am trying to contribute to Lemmy both monetarily and by not just lurking).

            I love the fidelity of Apple Music which is what I use—it is certainly much better than my CD collection ever was. I don’t even bother using the lossless option as I cannot tell the difference. I usually have about 50GB of music sync’d to my devices and my wife and I camp without cell service often.

            I carefully curate my music collection. I have about 5000 songs I love neatly sorted into decade playlists plus specialty playlists. I keep a textual backup of my playlists in addition to exported playlist backups to allow me to recover from pretty much any issue including apple account loss.
            I rarely see removed songs, but do occasionally see them. Since my library is well curated it is easy to see which tracks are unavailable. I would guess I have been impacted on less than 0.1%.

            It is extremely rare for me to not find the songs I want on Apple Music, but I have uploaded many tracks to Apple Music that I had to procure from other locations. The most common ones have been live tracks, soundtracks and mixes. At that point they work just like any other music in my library.

            It’s been a pretty good experience—not one I would have predicted 20 years ago.

            • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
              1·
              9 days ago

              I wasn’t trying to say streaming is wrong, I definitely use it from time to time, and though I trend heavily towards BandCamp and Soulseek I’ll cop to fidelity rarely being important for me outside of certain genres with heavier bass or effects that make flac worthwhile. Generally it’s very diminished returns for bloated file size - especially so on mobile devices and Bluetooth/car playback

              I rarely see removed songs, but do occasionally see them. Since my library is well curated it is easy to see which tracks are unavailable. I would guess I have been impacted on less than 0.1%.

              I have both fringe and mainstream taste, so I do semi-regularly encounter outright missing artists/groups, or occasionally entire genres, especially so in electronic - that alone is worth the effort of building and managing a collection to me. It is very disappointing to find an artist available via streaming, but not their self released/indie albums because of licensing agreements

              It is extremely rare for me to not find the songs I want on Apple Music, but I have uploaded many tracks to Apple Music that I had to procure from other locations.

              You can upload your tracks to the cloud storage for later streaming? That’s actually pretty neat, and solves a lot of the ‘wrong’ live version/acoustic rendition/etc problems nicely.

              It’s been a pretty good experience—not one I would have predicted 20 years ago.

              Tbh same! Looking at the music industry after the vinyl era where pressing was cheaper but albums weren’t, it’s nice that they eventually were dragged kicking and screaming to digital distribution - “piracy is a service problem” and they refused to learn for decades while disruptive competition grew online

  • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
    401·
    12 days ago

    i was explaining to a college student about mp3 players and they thought they sounded like some amazing new product coming down the pipeline. it made me feel super old and super sad for all that tech companies have robbed from us

        • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          English
          12·
          11 days ago

          At first I was gonna say you can have thousands of songs on your smartphone regardless, but I guess those kids probably aren’t too acquainted with file browsers.

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
              12·
              11 days ago

              I hate that so many devices try hard to obscure filesystems even though they are right there, right under the hood. I remember how ridiculous it was to try and browse an iPod as the hard drive it was. They copied your files into an indecipherable file tree with weird names. If companies aren’t trying to keep you from copying shit then they’re thinking you’re too dumb to understand files and folders and putting some other weird UI on top of them to make them “user friendly”.

              And thusly, they made kids unable to understand file browsers/systems :'(

  • Hupf@feddit.org
    28·
    11 days ago

    Back in the day, I had one that looked like this and was essentially built around an AA battery, which was great since you could always carry a spare.

    • InvisibleShoe@lemmy.world
      3·
      10 days ago

      I used to have one of these to listen to music while walking to school back in the day. It was the first device I hacked the firmware to move the menu options around. It was the perfect size to fit into the breast pocket on school uniforms.

  • TerraRoot@sh.itjust.works
    24·
    12 days ago

    Have the same in black, doesn’t even need any special software to load songs on it, unlike some other creative products.

    • viking@infosec.pub
      8·
      12 days ago

      I think it started with Apple requiring iTunes for their shitty DRM. The first few could still connect via USB regularly, but all file names were garbled and ID3 tags stripped, so you could technically copy the songs over, but had to manually restore them. From there it just went downhill.

      • ObtuseDoorFrame@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        11 days ago

        I wanted a Samsung for my most recent phone purchase but I ended up going with Sony because it’s the only one on the market with a jack. Samsung hasn’t had jacks for years, which is a bummer because I miss my Samsung phone. They’re just somehow more responsive and easier to use.

        Which Samsung model are you claiming had a jack? I could be wrong.

  • brvslvrnst@lemmy.ml
    19·
    11 days ago

    Still have my 120G Zune and 16G Zune HD, both of which still work flawlessly. It’s wild to think what we left behind

    • panicnow@lemmy.world
      3·
      11 days ago

      I gave my (young) son a 16G Zune HD. It lived through a washer/dryer cycle—I don’t understand how.

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
    14·
    12 days ago

    The old Creative MuVo would pull apart, exposing a male USB connector for easy drag & drop loading of MP3s. Such a great design.

  • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    12 days ago

    The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB… my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.

    You may be able to crack it open and upgrade that storage. I have a similar little MP3 player with 16GB on an internal microSD card. It’s possbile to swap out the internals.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
      6·
      11 days ago

      If you google for mp3-players without touchscreen and you open a link like “12 best mp3-players without touchscreen 2025”, you may find maybe one in this list without touchscreen.

  • glibg@lemmy.ca
    9·
    11 days ago

    Aw man I wish I still had my old mp3 players. I had a round Sony one that was awesome, I could navigate songs/albums in my pocket without looking at the screen.

  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    12 days ago

    I’ve got an iPod Classic 160Gb, from 2007 I think. Still runs fine, synchs and everything. I hate everything Apple about it - the weird 12-pin connection, having to use iTunes, the fact that it’s been discontinued - but otherwise it’s grand. I got it a wee Bluetooth dongle that fits into the headphone jack so I can listen on my hearing aids.

    I’m almost scared to use it, because it would be hard to replace. I’m often out of phone signal range, and it’s good to have all my music, audio books, podcasts etc still available. What else can do this? The Cloud is useless without a phone signal.