[nvarsj]

Possibly it's a paid for ad. But the trend is real, at least among Gen Z/Alphas. I recently modded an iPod Mini 2nd gen for my daughter and put Rockbox on it. The thing is amazing, and I am thinking about buying an iPod classic myself. The touch wheel interface is one of my favourite interfaces ever.

[t0mas88]

Cool! I wrote a significant part of the graphical UI for rockbox about 20 years ago. It was text based before that. Needed it for my back then very fancy harddisk based mp3 player.

The project was great to work with, Daniel Stenberg (also the curl maintainer) was really good at helping newcomers like me participate. That may be a big part of why the project is still around 20 years later.

[graypegg]

First off, you're a kickass parent, that's an awesome thing to do for your daughter. How easy is it to sync with music she wants to listen to? I haven't touched Rockbox in quite a while, but I imagine it's still expecting DRM-free audio files of some sort right? Other than bandcamp I can't think of any good source for finding some beyond ripping audio streams and organizing it yourself.

[prepend]

A lot of my drm-free mp3s come from friends. I probably have 2000+ cds that I’ve ripped, or downloads from buying vinyl. I’ll make a copy for friends to load onto devices and it’s the equivalent of loaning a disc to a friend.

I suppose there’s probably music torrent sites out there, but haven’t heard of anyone pirating music in many years as I’m too old now.

[iamdamian]

Apple’s music has mostly been DRM-free since 2009!

I love this about Apple and give them as much of my business I can to show that there is still a healthy market outside streaming. (7digital is another good source, although more expensive than Apple. They offer FLAC and 320kbps.)

Makes me wish e-book stores would get onboard…

[nine_k]

Amazon Music sells DRM-free MP3 files.

[ted537]

Qobuz too!

[SubmarineClub]

I’ve been thinking about doing this too! Would love to get back to maintaining a personal music collection on a dedicated mp3 player.

[rienbdj]

Do the old iPods still hold battery well?

[nvarsj]

You can buy good quality replacement batteries. I got Cameron Sino "CS-EC003XL". It lasts at least a week before needing a charge, depending how much you use it.