Public Service Announcement: there’s a healthy marketplace of refurbished and upgraded iPods from the 2004 era on eBay, the Classic 5.5 comes highly recommended with solid DAC from the factory but iPods mini with upgraded DAC, fresh battery, and large flash memory swaps for the old spinning disks are readily available.

I subscribe to Qobuz and buy a lot of lossless DRM free music and can recommend them as well, tho there was recently a big swath of the available music dropped due to licensing issues (hence the utility of downloading DRM free music). I also price shop against the digital albums and often a CD on eBay will be cheaper, I don’t mind missing out on the “24bit 192khz hifi” to save a few bucks.

Newer Sony Walkmans have lossless support and some can also act as a USB DAC. Unfortunately the UIs are still terrible (no search, only oversensitive alphabet scroll?), proprietary cables and the device slowly re-indexes every boot. Organizing music hasn't improved since 2000 with some albums being split into 10 artists if they have collaborations. Still, at least we don't have to use Sonic Stage any more, mine has a uSD slot, and mass storage largely works. It's a shame Zune went nowhere, the HD was a wonderful device.

But an iPod from the 2004 era is both hard to use and very heavy. You can get a tiny flash-based modern mp3 player for $30-$40, which is below the apparent price of a 2004 iPod on eBay.

Mmm agree to disagree, iPod classic is not a heavyweight device and the UX is what we had when I was a kid so easy AND nostalgic, but agreed the little sandisk clips solve the problem just as well.

Edit: I can't imagine swapping HDD for flash saves more than a few grams, can it?

Ipod classics have a spinning rust hdd. They are heavy. The 2004 4th gen 40 GB is 176 grams and is a bulky 110 cm3. That's quite a bit more than my pixel 5, which is 151 grams and just 81 cm3. In fact, could buy nearly any old phone and do better, immediately, and have a much nicer display and better bluetooth codecs and the ability to play lossless formats.

I had an iPod in 2004. I gave it away because it was too heavy to carry around.

I ultimately replaced it with a Zen Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Zen#ZEN_Stone/Stone_P...

With the HDD swapped out for flash the weight is going to be much less, isn't it?

So what, you want to modify a good mp3 player to look more like a bad one?

With the classic iPod you've got a bad UI instead of a good UI and a large object instead of a small one. And while it will be lighter without the hard drive, it will still be a lot heavier than an mp3 player. It's pure downside on several different dimensions.

If you want to play your music on a device shaped like an iPod, it's even easier to use your existing phone.

I have no idea what a classic iPod weighs without the drive inside. No need to dismiss other people's requirements and preferences though.

I've had about 4 San Disk clips now. mostly because I lose them or put them through the wash.

some of the older models were definitely better, but at 20-40 bucks each and no real dependencies on the rest of my personal computer ecosystem it's a fair trade.

it's only that Spotify and YT music are easy to use that I haven't bought a new one. with enshitifacation being a thing I might go back

They are awful to use, even if you just want to shuffle songs.

On a lark, I refunded up my phone with my mp3 library I keep on my laptop and I built up so many years ago. I enjoyed it just fine for the nostalgia but I still don't understand where I'm going to discover new music without services like Spotify. I used go to shows and see new artists that way, but with kids that's not as much a valid proposition as it once was.

Back when music blogs were exploding, it was a great way to discover new music. I'm not sure how many of those are still around, but hype machine has been out there for probably 20 years now and that was always a great way to just blow a few hours listening to all kinds of new stuff - https://hypem.com/latest/all

There's also local independent radio stations, many of which have streaming now.

WYCE is my personal favorite - https://grcmc.org/wyce

> where I'm going to discover new music

You can use services like listenbrainz or last.fm.

I go to Bandcamp once and month and just shoot down their rock artists sorted by "new"

Ever since Google Play Music was killed off, I've been putting off setting up a home server and accessing my entire collection like that. There's some Android program that allows one to do that, forget the name of it though. Think it has "fish" in the name

Possibly Jellyfin?

I’ve been strongly considering refurbing the 6th gen iPod Classic I have in the garage. The disk died years ago, and I imagine it would need a battery by now.

Now I’m wondering if anybody sells a USB-C adapter to iPod dock connector.

One of these days the parts are going to end up at my doorstep. Boredom and a couple of beers away.

I’ll do you one better, how about swapping the port on the iPod to USB-C ?

https://moonlit.market/

Have you got the old iTunes installed? I was pleasantly surprised Apple still offers the old binaries for download

https://support.apple.com/en-us/docs/software

My criteria are:

- 500GB+

- Ability to sort by the albumartist tag (listen to heaps of compilations)

- Ability to export play log

- Functions like any other external storage device for transfer purposes

Anything out there? Last I checked (10 years ago) there was nothing that hit all these marks. I had a Sansa Clip with Rockbox and just dealt with the low storage capacity.

Anything that takes SD cards should make storage a non-issue and make file transfer dead simple. Even microSD cards can hold over well over 5TB

Dedicated players are getting harder to find though. I had a Cowon mp3 player for a few years which was pretty nice. Maybe see if they've got something you like? http://www.cowonglobal.com

SD cards of that size may not be compatible with many devices though.

iPod video 5th gen w/ Rockbox custom firmware. Then do the bluetooth mod and you're in music heaven. Probably fairly easy to write a plugin for the functionality you mentioned.

I just rotate music on a microSD for mobile. However, you can optionally self-host a music server and connect with a client on your device to stream. It's also possible to SSH from outside home network, if you really want to.

No discovery of new music?

In the immortal words of every generation entering their middle age years (~30 years old and up):

"New music is shit. Kids these days have no taste."

New music as in "new to me" not "newly released".

Best way to discover new music is friends, family, gigs, events, parties, social gatherings...

I have an Android phone with a 500GB SD card and audio jack. I use an app called PowerAmp. Recently they introduced some optional subscription, but I ignored that, and so far my experience has been fantastic. I've been using that app as my audio player for years already.

I don't get it why people but Samsung S99 Pro Plus Maxi for €9999 when cheap phones for developing markets are objectively better, minus the camera, and cost like €300.