An iPod and no recommendations are all I have wanted for my listening habits in 2024
I said goodbye to streaming my music with Apple Music because the service sucked and I was listening to the same stuff all the time anyway. I stayed subscribed for the longest time because Apple, like a kind of Stockholm syndrome where I just wanted to believe the apps were great and they picked the right music for me. I’m not saying I have great memory, but I can only remember a few songs I discovered that I really liked.
I found Bleachers and Half Moon Run. I thank Apple Music for that.
But I also just only listened to Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and alternative stuff from the 00’s.
I was fed up with Apple Music. I tried Spotify for a bit and loved almost everything about it. Podcasts were there, too, so Spotify was a kind of audio hub, which was pretty cool?
But I didn’t want to pay just to listen to the same stuff over and over. And why would I pay Spotify to listen to podcasts?
I also learned that I was done with being recommended stuff and there always being more to discover. I needed to have my own library, with no one watching my tracks[^1].
For music listening, I looked at all kinds of local music library apps. I went through Doppler and any other local library app, tried a Plex server with Plexamp for a bit but I didn’t have a server besides my laptop which was impractical, and eventually landed on Marvis Pro. I was able to finetune Marvis so I could see my music library the way I wanted. I even started rating my songs on a 1-5 star scale.
For podcast listening, I downloaded the last Castro app release before Castro 3 from my App Store purchased list. It lacked any kind of discovery. I loved that it was just me and my podcasts. Nobody’s seeing whatever I listen to. Then Overcast got a significant upgrade that made the app a lot simpler and easier to use, and since I kept thinking less-is-more, I subscribed only 3 podcast shows so I was never overwhelmed by choice.
I still wasn’t happy though. I still just wanted a dedicated music player device that couldn’t suck me in for inordinate amounts of time, like an iPhone can. I wanted one that had no Internet, that had earbuds connected via a cable and no Bluetooth. No charging of earbuds, no more software updates and re-learning stuff I got used to. The only algorithm on that device should be a Shuffle Songs feature that someone programmed 20 years ago. I needed it to be just me, my music, and my music player. I wanted a reliable music friend!
I had a few old iPods lying around. A first-gen 5 GB iPod, an original 512 MB iPod shuffle, and a 20 GB iPod photo (4th gen). I synced the music I already had locally to the iPod photo but syncing wasn’t reliable at all through a USB-C hub. Apparently it needed a high power USB port, which — what is that anyway? Ever since I learned that, I started looking for a more recent iPod and found a 9th gen iPod classic with 160 GB for around € 75. Which IMO is a fucking steal???
So I got an iPod classic. I initially set it up with the music I listened to in 2005/2006 when I had my first active memories of forming my own music taste with my iPod.
And it is so magical. It’s itch-free listening. There’s no FOMO itch by which you have any and all songs available to you at all times, and there’s always the option of looking up such and such artist, such and such song. [^2].
I listen to my music and no calls can interrupt me. No notifications can interrupt me. No in-the-moment actions can pause my music. I can take an earbud out and there’s no algorithm that pauses or unpauses my music. I can’t ask Siri about a song.
This is calm. [^1]: Pun intended? [^2]: I feel like we’ve all gotten used to it, that some of us won’t be with what we’re consuming because there may be something better on this service. I’m obviously talking about Netflix.