The Allure of the iPod Classic

I must admit, my relationship with music has become disconnected. Gone are the days that I would carefully curate playlists tailored to my routines and activities. I’ve even stopped listening to music nearly as much; I’ve replaced many of my daily listening minutes with podcasts and YouTube documentaries I can passively listen to. Music, for me, has become increasingly impersonal, algorithmic even, over the better part of the last decade, and I miss the role it once played in my life.

I suspect many people are in the same boat I now find myself in. I use Spotify to stream songs and albums, but rarely listen to new album releases. I have very little general knowledge on contemporary artists, tours, and projects; I haven’t been excited about anything new in years. The times I do listen to music, which is mostly at the gym or when driving with passengers, relies on service-generated playlists. What was once such an important part of my self-identity is now, for worse I would argue, generated by corporations with their own self interests.

Why has this dynamic changed in my life? To answer this, I must remember why music played such a large role in my early life and self-discovery. My first experiences in finding non-commercial songs and artists revolved largely around recommendations from my cool older cousins. CDs they had burned and passed down to me. Artists they had seen at a local show I was too young to attend, and too far geographically to have heard whispers of. These moments, these time capsules of their tastes, provided radical awakenings for me.

These entry points were also physical and intentional. I remember holding a CD my cousin gave me for Christmas, each track selected with me in mind when it was burned. It was personal. I carried my growing collection around in a case in my school backpack, and listened on the school bus through a portable CD player and a pair of cheap headphones my dad bought from CVS. Everything from the artist and song to how I listened was inherently mine. Physical and intentional.

Upon getting my first iPod, my hunger to find new music and add to my collection grew in its voracity. With access to the iTunes store, I could hunt down almost any released music and took great pride in the catalog of music I attained. For holidays, I would ask family members for iTunes gift cards, and I certainly put them to use. But there was still that crucial element of self-curation that predicated the experience. I had to buy the music, and then it appeared in my library like a book would on my shelf. 

So what changed? For one, the rise of apps like Pandora, which required minimal effort to curate, which then became integrated into the streaming services. The streaming services themselves greatly contributed as well: removing the barrier to listen to a song or album by providing buffet-style access to an entire catalog of music. The result? Music was not mine anymore. My library became rented; my tastes became curated. Fundamentally, music became something that I increasingly felt disconnected from.

Enter: the iPod Classic. A device only a decade old, but exceptionally obsolete. I would argue that its obsolescence is its greatest strength. It is insulated from streaming, alien to algorithms, and divorced from any distractions provided by a smartphone. It has always been, and will always be, the perfect handheld device to listen to music. The screen is too small to comfortably watch video. There is no antennae for cell radio or even bluetooth headphones. And, most importantly, the music library must be self bought, generated, and tailored. Even finding a song requires a heightened level of intent by interfacing with the click wheel, and when you do finally reach your destination, there is nothing left to do but enjoy the album art.

There is even a lively community of those that both appreciate the limitations of the iPod Classic as well as develop and sell modifications to improve the capabilities of the device. Websites like Boxy Pixel provide parts and walkthroughs to customize later generations of the handheld to increase storage, modify the case, and add USB-C charging (though in many cases the proprietary, dinosaur-like 30 pin connector still predicates data transfer). When I stumbled upon these forums, I could only think to myself, these people get it. 

I want music to occupy that role in my life again. I want it to be something that I’m excited to find and share. I don’t think I will ever get that feeling using streaming services. In that framework, I find myself compelled to revert to obsolescence, because those objects of intention have brought me more joy than I could ever find in a playlist titled “Chill Mix.” To that end, the iPod is not the past, it is my only hope for the future.