If I wanted an MP3 player again, in 2023, and wanted to rip cds to it and put digitally purchased albums on it, as actual owned files (not inside an proprietary ecosystem where I pay to only listen to that track within that service) could I still do that? What would I need? I don’t own, and can’t afford, a “real computer”, but i recall having lots of compatibility issues at the time between my mp3 player and computer os anyway. I’ve got an ipad and a pixel. Is there any feasible, non-ridiculously-difficult way to do this? Do they still sell any mp3 players? Do any of the old ones work with modern tech? I miss hearing my music on a simple, quiet, offline device without ads or streaming services.
You can buy MP3 players on Aliexpress. They still make them and they are not expensive, and you can even get bluetooth compatible ones.
I recently went about trying to do what you’re doing. I have a laptop and it was still pretty hard. Just buying digital music is tricky. I ended up downloading iTunes for some music, and buying others from Bandcamp for the few artists I could find on there.
I can still see problems. Without a computer, how will you transfer the files onto the MP3 player? Without a CD drive, how will you rip CDs?
I think you’re going to need to borrow a computer from a friend, but other than that it’s all feasible if a little annoying.
Yeah…I was hoping by now that maybe they made mp3 players by now that could sync to phones or tablets. I’m not above transferring files slowly and a few at a time - I used to type in the song names manually haha so it can’t be much worse. CDs are trickier. But I’m glad to know it was annoying but feasible. They really have made owning media such a high effort thing. Sigh.
most phones these days are an mp3 player. even my flip phones back to my first cdma one ~ 20 years ago.