[at_a_remove]

I was thinking of taking up walking again, despite getting stopped by police more than I would really like.

But I considered getting some kind of MP3 player and have gone down the bizarre rabbit hole of trying to find out if those even exist now, do they use .m3u playlists, and so forth. I haven't had as much time to listen to my music and I am not a user of streaming services (I want to listen to what I want to listen to, rather than some kind of firehose of what someone else decides via algorithm), so this would be a nice time to do it.

[themodelplumber]

I got the Oakcastle color MP3 player for my birthday last year. I had an AGPTek I think, before that. I like them. AGPTek is a good brand in my experience.

I do try to pay a bit higher than the baseline $20 USD range to get a better quality player, and sort by newest-to-market first, to get fresher batteries & firmware.

For walking or hiking the ones with buttons and clips are really great. They are very easy to use without looking at the screen. Mine do support .m3u playlists and have built-in playlist systems as well. You can shuffle files or shuffle playlist entries.

The FM radio features are also usually really convenient if you have wired headphones and any good stations or scheduled programming near where you live.

(I also have a ton of songs on my phone's card and I use Musicolet for that, which is great, but completely different in terms of experience, and I prefer not to walk or hike while holding my phone)

[at_a_remove]

AGPTek looks great, now I just have to winnow the products to see which has what I want. Thank you.

[twodave]

If you don’t mind going with Bluetooth headphones, there are many watches out there that’ll store mp3s and playlists on them. Kill several birds with one stone and get a nice Garmin that’ll also track vitals, map your hike, and measure your pace along with being able to play music and listen to audiobooks ;)

[AlbertCory]

> I want to listen to what I want to listen to

The good news is, a microSD card on your phone can hold all your music, even in FLAC form (unless you have an insanely large collection).

There are many music player apps that can either shuffle randomly, or play albums in sequence if that's what you want.

[AlbertCory]

> despite getting stopped by police more than I would really like.

Really? I don't think I've ever been stopped by police just for walking.

I did find, at Google, that almost every time I was out, someone would stop me and ask where the Google Store was. Weird.

[at_a_remove]

Honestly, I think it is a function of being large and a bit odd-looking. Some big pallid dude walking the neighborhood just sets off something on the cop-dar.

[otikik]

They make it more difficult than they should, but you can totally copy mp3 files in your Android or iphone and use a regular mp3 player app to listen to your own music. Most phones these days have space to spare.

[balfirevic]

> I want to listen to what I want to listen to

If you mean streaming services like Spotify or Deezer, is that not exactly what they allow you to do?