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
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.