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the only answer is self-hosting
The biggest problem we created is that you used to own things. Like music. Now you just lease them. Or stream them. And don’t forget the 65 minutes of ads for every 23 minutes of music. Or maybe that 33 minute ad in front of that 87 second long YouTube video. The device isn’t the issue, or the lack of devices. It’s the bullshit we have to deal with now that everything is a subscription or ad.
People talk like the dedicated portable music player just doesn’t exist anymore, but you can buy devices like that if you really wanted.
fiio has a good one for ~$50
I miss iPod. It’s easy to use. Doesn’t spam ads in my face. And the music is my own, I don’t need to pray it doesn’t disappear due to licensing deals.
CDs suck as a portable format but is nice since it’s like MP3s but not proprietary.
Cassettes suck, and I don’t miss them.
Records are a fun novelty. They are the worse format, but the art and the experience is fun especially since I need to be careful what albums I buy. I need to like the whole thing and not just a song or two.
Gen z here. I don’t feel like I’ve earned the right to talk about cassettes as a youngster, but a Type II cassette on a well maintained dual capstan deck and a well biased recording sound pretty good. Add a touch of Dolby type b noise cancellation and it’s even better.
Specifically, I’m using a Yamaha k-1020 deck ($350 refurbished), and Maxwell XL-II 90 tapes ($5-10). I’m running a proper audio interface into the cassette deck. Since I’m using my phone, I have the luxury of rapidly skipping around an album on my phone while I’m checking levels for an entire album. And I’m using a 3 head deck, so I can hear exactly what’s being recorded in realtime.
You might read that and be like “that’s too much work”, but that’s kinda the point imo. Why do people still do film photography when it’s more work than digital? (I also shoot film lol)
Admittedly, things fall apart a little when you move to portable cassette players. Modern players are kinda crap. I haven’t gotten my hands on any vintage walkmans yet.
IMO, sound was never really the issue with tapes (at least not for portable use), it was longevity - it doesn’t make a ton of sense to buy pre-recorded tapes when they can break so easily, but it was also kind of a PITA to record them yourself off CD, vinyl or radio.
I grew up with cassettes. Type II was a rarity and not what you’d buy from the store. Those were type I tapes.
Plus the whole format was a compromise. CDs almost whipped them out, but when digital came both were gone in a flash.
I think the only benefit of cassette today is making mix tapes, but on a retail and purchasable music standpoint. They weren’t good.
Yeah. Most of the modern prerecorded tapes are still crap. Although maybe like 20% of the pre recorded ones sound decent, surprisingly.
Cassettes were never designed for music, from what I understand. Instead, it was a format that music adopted later. Considering that, cassettes can actually sound really good imo. But I do have the luxury of using type II tapes. Type 1 isn’t bad if you have a really nice deck and a really good recording.
But isn’t there a whole lot more to this story? I believe cassettes were responsible for getting many underground artists started, who record labels would have never signed. I also heard a story where disregarded tapes set for recycling made their way from USA to other countries. Those tapes influenced music in that country, and they never would have been if they were another format.
That last point isn’t about audio quality, but it always seemed like cassettes didn’t get the respect they deserved imo.
Yeah. Daniel Johnston got to be a known musician because the guy was one of those creative souls that couldn’t help but to create music in this case, he released his music in cassettes and one of them somehow got to Kurt Cobain’s hands.
buy a phone with actual expandable storage and just download all your nusic via soulseek
I prefer a MP3 player. But yeah, that’s how I listen to most of my music is on my phone
I for one like all of it being in one versatile device. My issue with smartphones isn’t technology, but the corpos that profit from you even after you’ve bought the phone.
That’s the thing, though, if you buy a 1995 walkman, the corpos literally can’t profit from that any further (not in that way, anyway. You’re most likely still going to spend money on tapes). It’s ALSO an issue of technology.
We solved every problem… and somehow created ‘all my stuff is in one device’ as the new problem.
i only miss the device controls. the buttons and clickwheels were so awsome.
Wait… is that a toasted sandwich maker?
Your phone doesn’t have one? Pssshhht!
I stopped buying new phones come the era of smart phones, and stopped using them entirely after the Snowden confirmation. I’ve not kept up with what they can do. But if they can toast sandwiches now… that’s some sweet sweet pitcher plant juice.
Counterpoint: I’m old and don’t miss any of that. Fewer devices is very, very nice. And fewer physical pieces of media is even nicer for the environment.
I actually don’t miss having to be kind and rewind, or spending 15 minutes with a pencil spooling my music back into a listenable format after being a bit careless with my tapes, only to have Glenn Frey sound like he’s eating marbles next time.
Less waste and less hassle. Nostalgia is overrated.
Counter counter point. Your brain hasn’t been as fried by technology as the youth (I’m Gen Z). Streaming has trained our brains to never listen to full albums. Having to rewind is kinda the point. You’re way more likely to listen to an album from start to finish. Phones are overrated.
I semi-agree. A phone is better in any practical way.
But there is something magical about interacting with mechanical (and electromechanical) stuff.
Sometimes I really love putting a record on a record table, flipping a switch, and gently lowering the stylus into the groove. There’s no track skip, no fast-forward, you just sit there and listen to an entire album at once. The quality is worse than what I could get from YouTube or something, but it feels so much more engaging.
And it’s not nostalgia either, my childhood music was on cassettes and later CDs, and I feel less attracted to either of those.
I would probably absolutely hate it if it was the only music format available to me. But the contrast with modern digital music blasted from a depression rectangle is what probably makes it so appealing to me.
There’s no track skip
You can skip tracks on vinyl. Not at the press of a button, but if there’s a track you know you don’t like, and maybe it’s extra long, you can absolutely set the needle down at a different point. It’s literally what old school DJs did and do.
Well, I know, but don’t tell my ADHD brain that! This has forced me to listen to some tracks I wouldn’t have otherwise and made me appreciate the art of album composition. Even if I don’t particularly enjoy one of them, it still still combines with the others to become more than their sum.
Oh, also, there are turntables that allow you to skip tracks at the press of the button. But that ruins half the fun of vinyl for me.
Hmm, not sure about that. Waiting for my TV to boot or update or connecting to Wi-Fi or my m music streaming app to ‘think’ for two minutes until it works at all is tedious. Don’t get me wrong - it’s still net positive. But I would instantly choose any option that offers less features if it would give me back this cosy feeling, that I’m the customer and not the product. Don’t want to go into details here but it feels at certain edges that some of these integrated functionalities have simply not been tested for an actual user, but simply to offer … more.
Writing that, it also could just be age bias. :-p
We bought a TV last year, never connected it to any services and it works just fine. Some things require some care to not become tedious, but… They always used to as well!
I think the problem we’re facing now is that we’ve basically hit on as good as its going to get for a while.
Previously things had to improve upon what came before, but with phones being as versatile and all-encompassing as they are, there isnt really much room for improvement until the next big leap, whatever that will look like. Companies still want to make more money though, and they will do whatever it takes to get it.
We’re no longer customers as we used to be, we’re targets. We’re being analysed at ridiculous levels of scrutiny so they can turn the dials in just the right way to trick us into parting with just a little more money.
I mean, you know, alwayshasbeen.jpg and whatever, but the feeling is gone.
I only use streaming services to discover new music. General listening to music I like, is through local files. Those are always plug and play. No need to wait. Just listen to whatever you want.
Tv shows or movies are also downloaded and streamed from Jellyfin, a local media server on my pc. Local just works. And I’m the owner of my files.
My situation is very similar, I stream, but also have a vast collection of local media.
Dump Spotify and embrace yt-dlp
One benefit I find of less options is you enjoy it more. You paid good money for CDs back then. I carried enema of the state by blink182 and Americana by offspring everywhere with my cd player. Played them beginning to end, two of my favorite albums at that time.
Now, there is just so much, you could never consume it all. And when you do find new cool shit, next week it’s something else. I still fall back to offspring when I don’t care what to play. I missed offspring supercharged when it came out but they made a new one called running and cycling with the offspring that has some of the same tracks and I really like it.
I just feel quality and your care for an album due to the money invested was greater back then.
I saw Blink earlier this year. They were great!
I do like to listen to some vinyl every now and then, but that’s about it. I’ve listened to portable music all my life. Loved my walkman, don’t miss the quality and the cassettes. Loved my walkman, don’t miss the skipping, broken cd’s and how limited it is. Love minidisc, it solved most of the problems before and LP minidiscs were pretty nice, and of all the things i would say i miss them the most, because how futuristic it felt using a cassette/cd hybrid. But then mp3 players came soon after and that solved everything (almost) and now with tidal, my phone and good headphones, i can listen to everything at all times in lossless quality? What’s not to love?
It’s more nuanced. We like having all that stuff on one device. It’s the other stuff the device does that annoys us.
I guess i just miss having a walkman mode, where all it did was play music. If I could turn on a walkman mode on my phone, I sometimes would definitely do that.
It’s not exactly a Walkman, but I’ve recently gotten into looking at the Innioasis Y1 MP3. I asked for one for Christmas, as you can put Rockbox on it just like an iPod. That, to me, is so fucking cool!
In dire straits you can still buy an MP3 player. Alternatively, you’ll probably have all these problems still, so if you need to work on not getting distracted there’s nothing else for it.
Turn on do-not-disturb and you don’t get notifications or calls. It’s not a true walkman mode but it turns off some distractions.
A good suggestion. The harder problem is actually me. Oh, imma skip this song I don’t like it. Maybe they have a new album out, I’ll just quickly check. Hmm, what’s the weather tomorrow. Etc.
That’s not an issue with the medium, though.
And I really appreciate being able to watch hours of content with no adverts now. Back in the day, nearly everything had unskippable ads. There was no adblock; you had to watch everything on someone else’s schedule, and the only way to not watch ads was to pee or make a sandwich.
I haven’t seen an ad in years and, my god, it’s awesome.
How far back are we talking? Because I remember in the '90s using the VHS recorder to record shows to fast forward through the ads later
Yeah, but you had to sit there for like a minute to do that, and you had to be on alert for that, not enjoying it but waiting for the ad break. Nowadays, the whole thing just plays uninterrupted.
Me too old AF and don’t miss walkman or discman or digital cameras or iPod or VHS or any of that old technology.
I understand more as you move away from technology. Like I can get why others feel an attachment to vinyl record players or film photography. Anybody can understand that stuff, while a smart phone seems more like magic.
Because cassette tapes were awful, fast declining quality, tiny picture + tiny booklet if you’re lucky. Discman was awful while cycling to school, potholes causing interruptions… The mp3-player 256MB was a really cool innovation! Enjoyed that supermuch. Went through batteries FAST tho. But vinyl LPs… Is just different. It was never meant for on the road scenario and the size of the 12" sleeve just makes for a really cool collection of pictures alongside the cool collection of music. I still enjoy playing vinyl while I find it is the ultimate album experience. You get nice sleeve/context, sort of forced to listen album a to z and always dead silence in the end instead of some algorithm or autoplay making everything a never ending stream of best case ‘related’ stuff but more common the next sponsored crap being pushed on you…
But vinyl LPs… Is just different. It was never meant for on the road scenario
Says who? (Lol, wonder why this didn’t catch on…)
I actually miss the iPod and Zune. I like having my music on another device.
Counter-counterpoint: The battery saving features on my past 2 phones (Poco X3 Pro and Ulefone Armor 24) have been absolute shit. I am talking about randomly killing the music player, and even alarm.
And it’s also been unstable as fuck. I avoid updates once I learn all the bugs… and learn problems from others. I’ve had the X3 Pro motherboard fail 3 times, lasting 9 months on average. And after repair, instead of EEA version, I received a Chinese motherboard, with different software, and different set of bugs I had to learn to work around. And I heard MIUI 13 made everything even worse. Plus I lost the option to opt-out from tracking, because after the repair I was no longer on EU version of the software.
And what I can do is limited.
Arch isn’t exactly a stable experience. Every update seems to bring some random bugs. But it’s typically the same thing for everyone, you can probably search around, and somebody has experienced it, and you can change things in your OS on your computer, because for the most part, it is YOUR computer. Can’t do that with a phone.When I was unlocking my Motorola, I had to agree to a license agreement stating that I will not resell or otherwise transfer my phone to a different person, and that I will be held liable for any damages or bodily injury including death caused by the device.
Please corporation, have mercy, let me use the device I paid for.Also if the phone fails, I just lost everything at once.
Plus I have to replace it a little too often. There’s a lot of old electronics that only gets unusable because the plastics have already started decomposing, and either it’s extremely brittle and falling apart, or a sticky mess (fixable with IPA in the sticky case).
You’re pouring beer on sticky plastic to fix it? /s
I really do though. I would splice a guitar cable into one and use it as a portable guitar Amp so I could practice wherever
Do you carry your guitar wherever as well?
that was back when i was a student and yes i did. it got stolen about a decade ago. wouldn’t have been stolen if i had it on me.
it’s not as much fun if you don’t splice it directly into the tape feed yourself, but cool!
I miss physical buttons for when I’m listening to music.
Having to unlock my phone to skip a track or advance a podcast is really annoying.
I used to be able to click a button in my pocket. I could even slide a bit to skip forward and back 30 seconds.
I also like to listen to music in bed in the dark. The bright screen, the messing around with the unlock, really breaks the flow.
Yes I have earphones that are touch sensitive, but poking it messes with any good isolated fit I’ve achieved, the touch doesn’t always register and after a while, one ear starts to hurt. Especially when you need to tap three times to restart a track.
I’ve now got this stupid setup with a BT dongle in a usb a-c converter; which plugs into my phone and controls a tiny physical keyboard.
There are lots of mp3 players, but they don’t support streaming platforms. The ones that do, also went mainly touch screen only and cost a fortune. There is one physical Spotify player with buttons but it’s just a dumb cube with very basic functionality.
The ones that do, also went mainly touch screen only and cost a fortune.
There are sub 200 dollar DAPs (digital audio player) with physical buttons that run android and thus can run all your streaming services.
Though I’d argue using a DAP for streaming is kinda wasting your money, but if you really want to the function is there at a reasonable price.
You can also use wired headphones with a 3.5mm jack with them.
I just use a flac library I made myself and listen to it with a DAP that cost me less than 100 dollars. Makes the experience much engaging to me personally.
Most decent headphones still seem to have physical buttons. The big ones. With earbuds you’re kinda out of luck
Wat. The decent headphones are industry standard dt770 and certainly have no buttons.
Ah well I’m just a pleb with a pair of QC45 lol, not expensive enough to have whatever shitty touch thing some new expensive headphones have.
You said decent headphones. That excludes earbuds
You had me in the first half, but streaming on Spotify can go right to Dell.
I totally agree. I still have a large mp3 and flac collection.
When Spotify came a long I used both for a while. But my Spotify playlists became so full of completely random tracks, it was never financially viable to even buy 10%, and its become more difficult to do so legally.
For the bands/artists I really like, I’ve bought CDs or if that’s not possible, bought digital versions.
I am attempting to transition away from streaming completely, but I have playlists which are 100+ hours long; which I’ve curated myself. I have a dozen others which are 8-20.
You could accuse me of having too much music. That i can’t possibly listen to most of it. Perhaps there is some truth in that. When you’ve had access to an unlimited buffet, it’s difficult to go back to a set menu.
Yes, ultimately I want to own all my most listened to music, but for now it would be nice to do both and have a player with physical buttons.
I don’t use streaming, but I have high hopes for Snowsky. The Echo Mini is very close to what I want, and the slated release for the Echo (normal?) is soon.
I’m very grateful to 2010 me who decided to rip my family’s CD albums into a hard drive, which has stayed with me through multiple countries, pcs, and listening devices. Built on with Bandcamp and Soulseek.
Motorola maps volume buttons so that a long press skips instead of adjusting volume when screen is off. I really miss that one.
You miss the emotions the walkman brought, especially that nowadays you don’t even own data that’s on this small all-in-one device, let alone the music you listen to…
So of course you don’t get as much joy out of it when it basically is a door to the hell where souls go to agonize wishing they’d die already
sigh but yeah, I get your point
you don’t even own data that’s on this small all-in-one device
If I don’t own it, why does everyone keep insisting I stole it?
If buying is not owning then copying is not stealing.
username checks out
The problem is that this one device we adopted kept getting worse at what it was supposed to do and got repurposed as a real time ad delivery and social engineering machine instead.
Just the other day I was noticing how you don’t see vhs or cassette tape ribbon just littering the ground anymore. It’s better this way
now you don’t even see the lithium batteries leaching into the water supply!
Yup, thank God each device just has one lithium battery, instead of the HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS of alkaline batteries you’d go through in the life of a device in the past. You got about 6-8 hours of gameplay in a GameBoy from 2 AA batteries. Kids played these every single day. You have any idea how many we went through?
Or stereos/walkman of the time using even more? Stereos used 4-12 C/D batteries and lasted maybe 2 hours.
You have no idea how incredibly better you have it with lithium batteries and the waste they create. We used to buy alkaline batteries by the 24/48 pack as a regular grocery item.
I’ve used recchargeables for all my life. some of the first ones still work. No idea where they actually end up but I always brought them to the battery section at the recycle depot when they finally died.
While better, even those were terrible at first. The first ones were charged for almost as much time as they were used for. We’ve come a loooooooong way with battery tech, mostly for the better. At this point, battery waste is almost entirely a recycling infrastructure problem(we need more facilities doing it and more people turning them in instead of dumping them).
i hear this a lot but it’s not like those things do not exist anymore? they are even still being produced.
