[pcmoney]

Somebody help me understand this?

If the audio quality isn’t better why is it so much better than the “bad” subscription services?

I understand critiques of how little they pay artists but I mean from a customer perspective, why is spotify et al bad?

I assume you have to buy download organize and sync the music for this system?

Is it just nostalgia? Just a single purpose device that cant text you etc?

[rtpg]

From a usability perspective Spotify is doing stuff like pushing podcasts all over its interface, and sometimes the UI just completely freezes up.

There’s theoretical stuff about losing access to music but there’s the entirely practical issues that come from playing music off of a remote server that has to track plays etc vs stuff on disk and a software stack that doesn’t have to be concerned about new features or some upselling to meet KPIs.

And of course a dedicated player is just a player, so you’re gonna be able to quickly open and do stuff. The problem with Omnidevices is you gotta first navigate to the single purpose thing

[californical]

> theoretical stuff about losing access to music

This has happened to me noticeably a bunch of times. It happened on Spotify, which I’ve since switched away from, but it happens on Tidal too (which I use now). I’m not sure if Spotify still has this feature, but Tidal will show me a song “grayed out” if it was on a playlist but it’s unavailable now. It isn’t often, but sometimes songs/albums that I really like just… go away. You wouldn’t always notice, but it is definitely a very real issue!

[cfcf14]

The author could have probably shed a tad more light on why they feel music apps (spotify et al) are bad. I agree with them though - these apps are atrocious to use, and seem to be continually getting worse. Some of my ongoing complaints about spotify are the following:

* Offline mode still doesn't work properly, after literally years of development. If you lose connection while streaming and want to switch to your 'downloaded albums'? Nope, the app will hang on a blank screen or crash. As londoner, this means spotify basically doesn't work on the tube at all - again, _even in offline-mode_.

* App will generally blank screen, hang, or crash semi-regularly for no apparent reason at least a couple times a day.

* Audio quality is awful. The default is 96kbps, which I believe even the most untrained listening can hear the crumminess of.

* Tons of missing music, even from mainstream artists.

* UI makes it difficult to navigate playlists <-> artist <-> song <-> album, traversing the hierarchy of music associations

* UI prioritises pushing podcast & other unwanted commercial content at you, make it difficult to find what you want and navigate the library

Then you've got the scumminess of the company itself that you alluded to (not paying artists, toxic corporate politics, etc).

[marlor]

I have both a Walkman (for music) and an upgraded/rebuilt iPod (for audiobooks) and prefer them for a few reasons:

- They don’t use any mobile data, and work when in a mobile-phone black spot (e.g. the national parks I go to most weekends). This is the main one.

- I can store all my music on there, without needing to use any storage space on my phone.

- They last forever with some basic maintenance. My iPod was made in 2006. I’ve upgraded the battery and replaced the HDD with an SD-card, but otherwise it just keeps on going.

- I can switch EQ profiles on my Walkman super-easily to suit different music or headphones. No navigating menus, it’s done in under a second.

- Tactile controls and voiced menus on my Rockboxed iPod. I can use the device entirely without looking at the screen. Handy when driving, but also useful when jogging or cycling, any other time you’d rather not stare at a screen instead of being aware of your environment.

- I can load them up with the exact pressing of music I want to listen to. For many old albums, which have gone though a dozen re-releases and remasters, this makes a difference. In fact, for some albums I have several different releases on my player, all with their distinct character, pros and cons.

- Brilliant bookmarking in Rockbox for audiobooks. Super customisable. And dedicated players never do a software update and lose your state. It’s always ready to go, precisely where I left it.

- Car mode. Brilliant for cars like my weekender that predate proper phone connectivity. Rockbox will automatically pause your audiobook when you turn off the ignition and start again when you’re back.

- Ability to enable dynamic range compression to combat road noise. All in a few button presses, without looking at the screen.

Are they for everyone? Of course not. But all of the above things matter to me personally.

[magnetowasright]

I think you’ve covered it all here but I’ll add my slightly different use case to your list

I use iPod Classics, I haven’t tried rockboxing any, though. I’ve been meaning to but haven’t yet.

Many artists I like aren’t on all (or any) of the streaming platforms. I also still buy CDs and generally like owning my copies as much as I can.

I hate user interface changes/companies like Spotify having the ability to disable basic features on a whim

No internet, buy once/no ads/no drm, and no touchscreen are important to me. The click wheel is just so good lol

[jwong_]

What Walkman and iPod do you use?

I’ve started using my old iPod video again, and enjoying it for music, but curious on your use case for it as deviated audiobooks. How did you rebuild it specifically for audiobooks? Just toss RockBox on it?

[marlor]

Just Rockbox. I’m using an iPod Video as well. Then I set up the bookmarking and startup settings to suit. It’s very customisable.

I also generated “talk files” to voice the filenames.

My Walkman is an NW-A45 upgraded with custom firmware from www.nwmods.ml.

[aceazzameen]

I think you're selling me on upgrading my 4th gen iPod. I didn't realize you can swap out the HDD for a SD card. It looks pretty easy too! Also all this talk about Rockbox makes me want to try it.

[thirdsun]

Because there's a lot of niche, obscure music missing from streaming services. People who are into music care about those gaps in the catalogue and they want to own their collection without fear of loosing access to their content due to changing rights, which might happen any day.

[iasay]

To note you can add your own music to Apple Music. About half my music was from CDs and iTunes back in the day.

[thirdsun]

I know. My whole collection lives in Apple's music.app - I jsut don't want to rely on their (or anyone else's) streaming service. I use Spotify merely to preview releases I consider buying.

[stonith]

I have a similar device and use it daily.

I don't have to worry about my music being removed because the licensing changed at the streaming provider. I tried various streaming services and all of them removed music from me at some point. This isn't something that's particularly negotiable for me.

I can trivially add songs that aren't on a streaming service using youtube-dl or similar.

I can change songs by pressing a physical button on the side of the player, meaning it doesn't have to leave my pocket and I don't have to look at it. This is particularly useful while exercising.

[dangus]

You can do all of this with a smartphone, though. There are plenty of offline music apps for smartphones. There are plenty of phones (and headphones) with physical buttons to control music.

My main criticism is that this is all redundant hardware with basically no unique capabilities.

Even if the DAC is extra special, that’s something you can get on a phone via USB.

[berkut]

In my opinion, the iOS experience for playing offline music is going downhill, and has been since the iPhone 3GS era.

It gets more and more difficult to have a UI dedicated to offline music - you can disable streaming, but you can't disable the 'Radio' section of the Music app for example.

Similarly, the user experience has got quite a bit worse for navigating your catalogue: 10 years or so ago, you used to be able to click the Name of the Artist or Album that was playing, and it would jump to either the artist or the album respectively: these days, on iOS 15, doing that does nothing other than jump back to the currently playing song list (so current album normally), neither does hold-and-press. I have to navigate with the back button, or go back through library, and find the artist each time, or use search.

There are third part dedicated apps and I've tried some of them (and bought Ecoute and VOX), but they're not perfect either.

[dangus]

If the Sony Walkman’s player isn’t perfect, you can’t replace it, because it’s not a general purpose computing device like a smartphone.

[stonith]

Smartphones are also generally a lot larger, so they don't fit in my pocket very well while cycling or running.

I need my smartphone to do a whole bunch of things outside playing music, and restricting myself to specific models with physical audio control buttons and small screens makes the market a lot smaller and would probably leave me with a poorer phone than picking one without needing to think about its ability to play music while exercising. I did this for my previous phone and the result wasn't very pleasant, so went with the separate players this time around.

Different headphones might be an option, but again a lot of the better phones are ditching headphone jacks, so it would be restricting my phone options.

[wombat-man]

you can still load songs directly. I use the controls on my earbuds to switch songs. Not as fine a degree of control but most of the time I just need to skip anyway.

[0xbadcafebee]

> why is spotify et al bad

Because Spotify et al doesn't give you a big directory full of MP3s. On top of that, the physical interface and features of a small dedicated player is a better user experience.

[dangus]

What’s better about a small dedicated player compared to using an offline media jukebox app?

Smartphones can play offline media. They can play media hosted on a private server. Nobody’s forcing any smartphone user to use Spotify in particular. There’s always alternatives like VLC and countless others that offer that same functionality.

To me, a dedicated player is redundant hardware with less processing power and refinement than a typical smartphone.

Even Apple, king of the locked down proprietary experience, has a Music app with the option to completely disable and hide their streaming service from even being visible. You can sync music via a USB cable or WiFi from local files just like it was an original iPod.

[0xbadcafebee]

Well first of all I hate touchscreens and wish they would die in a fire. Every smartphone I've had has been too big for me to comfortably use with one hand, compared to older dumbphones which were very easy to use. Even if you find a small smartphone, the touchscreen then gets cramped. A small digital screen and thoughtfully placed physical buttons creates an interface that I can navigate without ever taking it out of my pocket. It also takes up less space, which opens up new possibilities for places to put it or when/where to take it. When you have a small device with physical buttons, you can just do more with it, easier, faster, more reliably.

The other thing is, most smartphones today are insanely over-complicated and not reliable at all. They consume an insane amount of system resources, their battery life is piss-poor, they're constantly being updated which leads to more instability. And new devices aren't necessarily backwards compatible with old apps, meaning you might end up with a phone just for music anyway, or end up losing a useful app. A dedicated device with a simpler RTOS can actually function faster, better, more reliably, for longer.

And to top it all off, the software of a Sony Walkman is usually top-notch. Good EQ presets, an interface designed to make it easy to navigate, with all the player options you want, with UX front and center. Quality control is high because you have to assume the user will never update the firmware.

And having a bunch of MP3s by default is just the simplest thing you can do. Usually the software auto-indexes and sorts and creates playlists etc by the ID3 tags, but if not, you can organize them manually into folders and manual playlists. You have pretty much total control over the music selection, experience, quality.

[noisy_boy]

> What’s better about a small dedicated player compared to using an offline media jukebox app?

Sometimes offline requires more effort. I would rather my kid have a dedicated MP3 player that does just that instead of a phone that requires locking down with too many points of breach. Way more cheaper to replace too compared to a lost/damaged smartphone.

[nl]

To add to this, you can use Spotify to sync your MP3 from a computer to your phone and play them via the Spotify interface. It works very well!

[ge96]

Neil Young comes in with his Toblerone MP3 device