Thoughts on buying a music player

[NekoTofu]

I wanted it to change my practical habit of listening music on a background. It often came up as a noise without ever noticing the sounds and tracks, i concluded that it has to be overfill content on internet which pushes the tolerance on to myself for unnecessary time. I get this constant habit of which makes my music taste isn't gotten newer or recent added ones haven't touch for months and overly benching my old discoveries on 2020-23.

Typical ADHD shit..

So i lightly thinks, streaming platform < Mp3 are reasonable choice and could helpful for highly personalize music listening and customization. seriously i don't wanna mention or take credit some DAP were able to relativily usage as a smartphone so would excluded as player solely just because it has internet. I also research some of bit which are personally appeal my style but for me doesn't get around what quirky hi-fi slang like db stuff or audiophile slangs. although i can give the brands that appeal my style are just between Mechen and old IPod.
You can give your intial thoughts if your owner or not, how's your experience on mp3 :)

 

[Tonberry]

It's nice if you're willing to put in the work to manually download, organize and switch out your music. I haven been using Spotify for fifteen years (because my dad was an early adopter for the family plan so I've never had to think about it), but I agree that it can probably help make your listening experience more personalized, if you're willing to do the manual work.

No clue on which device you should go for though.

 

[Prism_Red]

To preface I am not an audiophile, but I don't like the idea of listening to music at the mercy of internet connection so yeah, I have a DAP, I have an LG XBoom 2.1 Speaker connected to my CD/DVD player in my room mostly used for a background music, and I collect physical media as well, I don't have account/subscription/membership to any online music streaming platform, granted almost half of the songs I listened to usually aren't available for stream, I use a low to mid-range Audio technica headphone and/or a limited edition wireless earbuds for simp purpose. So far I'm very content with that.

It all depends on what you are looking for. If you just want a quick and easy device to listen to music I suggest a modded iPod.

 

[Teordek]

+1 for physical media for more intentional listening. I'm one of those jackasses with a record player and a vinyl collection, and I find the ritual of thumbing through and selecting something real from a shelf, turning on the speakers/amp/player, setting the disc in, and pressing a big play button pulls me into it way more than tapping something random on a streaming service. CDs would be easier to get into and still have this little ritual.

 

[Tonberry]

+1 for physical media for more intentional listening. I'm one of those jackasses with a record player and a vinyl collection, and I find the ritual of thumbing through and selecting something real from a shelf, turning on the speakers/amp/player, setting the disc in, and pressing a big play button pulls me into it way more than tapping something random on a streaming service. CDs would be easier to get into and still have this little ritual.

The ritual part really goes a long way. I haven't reached that point with music yet, but I'm definitely like that when it comes to books and comics.

 

[Antilocal123]

Idk dude I just like the sound blessing my eardrums.

 

[J.B’s rabbit den]

Go for my dude, what more do you want me to say

 

[Mini_Man.XW]

Recommend anyone even remotely interested to get one. They're super fun and the benefits of having two separate devices are almost immediate. There's definitely more work that goes into setting them up, but it's totally worth it imo

 

[NekoTofu]

ah.. of course
It doesn't really matter beyond just listening to music which ever devices is on. specification doesn't require beside to jamming your fav tunes.
Yet i have some feeling on Y2K fondness despite born from 2000s. Tech wasn't the same since in my childhood but i want the culture of portable while touching a grass era. Smartphone manages to blow it off without simplicity of do one task. In worse case, streaming platform heavily to put our edge of the seat consequently lost our decisive way of artists approach to new sound. ngl i felt good for ranting about streaming platform with their shit tons of curating discovers.

yeah i guess i like DAP, tho never had one. is fashionable because i get jealous when Persona 3 mc was rockin with his mp3 player. till this day never get out of my head what kind music is he listening to.

 

[jiyuuboyetsvi]

iPods are a tad bit finicky to work with, though they're decent. I hate anything with a touch screen on it since I feel the need to look at and do other things with said device. iPods are nice in that respect since they're much more tactile. The thing about iPods though is that in order to use them like a normal DAP, I'd recommend installing Rockbox which is a custom OS that will let you basically drag and drop songs onto your iPod.

I also absolutely fucking hate streaming services and corpo shit. They're the most convenient thing in most cases, which is why they're so popular. But honestly they actively make me feel like I'm losing brain cells. I never discover anything new on Spotify, but then again I only listen to full albums whenever I listen to music. I hardly ever listen to just singles.

If you want some good recommendations for places to find new music, there a few nice sites. Two that I use in specific are rateyourmusic.com and last.fm. Rateyourmusic, or RYM, is a huge music data base where the users rate albums (either new ones or old ones) on a 5 star system. Using the ratings from the community, Albums get aggregated into ranked charts. There's also a lot of filters you can use to search up different genres and explore new things. There's a similar website that I haven't gotten too much into called albumoftheyear.com which is the same concept as RYM.

Last.fm isn't quite the same thing. You can think of it as something akin to Spotify wrapped, but year round. I like to use it because it keeps track of all my listening and puts them into silly lil charts that I can keep track of.

I agree with everyone here though, curating your own music collection and being an active listener and persurer of music definitely makes interacting and listening to music a much deeper and more rewarding experience, though I'm a hardcore music nerd xD I also love collecting music physically on CD since its way less unwieldy than vinyl records and is way easier to rip into digital files so I can take them with me.