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October 8 2026 - 9:11 am

Is That Yer Mom’s MP3 Player?

My daughter, who works at one of the Boston area colleges, reports: “I thought you’d be interested to know that the hip thing kids are doing now is using MP3 players and it makes no sense to me. They will have their MP3 player on their desk next to their iPhone. I would love an explanation.”

She actually grew up during the First Wave of MP3 and iPod players, so this resurgence in popularity is retro and nostalgic. But I don’t think this trend is based on a love of old tech. I think this is a reaction to streaming services, which have ads, subscriptions, AI and tech-bros at the helm.

It also seems that the very thing I like about streaming services—virtually every record ever recorded at your fingertips—is too much music. Discovery is still a problem and “you may also like” recommendations are unhelpful and annoying. If you know what you like and only like what you know then filling an MP3 player with your faves just makes sense.

If you search at Amazon for MP3 players you’ll find a ton of them. Some of them are very inexpensive (well, under $100) and have pretty good features, like Bluetooth, WiFi, FM radio, voice recorder, photo album and memory card expansion. I myself bought a Sony Walkman digital player a couple of years ago for easy on-the-go usage.

So if you wanna be hip for a little while, go find that old Rio player and flaunt it.

posted in iPod, Players
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