Aerodrome

iLove using an iPod

I've been using an iPod Classic for the last few months for music and it's been surprisingly eye-opening.

Earlier this year, I made it a bit of a goal of mine to move off of streaming services for the majority of my music listening. Instead of using Tidal, I've been buying CDs and vinyls to rip or download from in order to build up a music collection that's mine.

Listening on Drives

I mainly listen to music on my computer and when I'm driving. My car's getting close to being two decades old so it's go a CD player and an aux port. And given the death of the aux port in modern phones, I've had a Bluetooth receiver connected to the aux port to play music from Tidal of of my phone.

The first thing I realized with replacing this with my iPod was that it was actually easier and faster to start listening to music with it in the car. Before, every time I would start my car I would have to:

And even then texts and GPS notifications would cut through while I'd be driving and interrupt whatever I was listening to.

But with the iPod?

That's it. In fact, I can actually skip songs more easily than on my phone. PHYSICAL BUTTONS! I don't have to look at the iPod to skip because the skip button is always in the same physical place!

Music (or How "Chris Black Changed My Life" Changed My Life)

I feel like it would be kinda repetitive to talk about playing music on The iPod. Surprise, surprise... the company that revolutionized portable music players made a really good music player! What I really want to focus on is how my personal "music collection" journey has done wonders for finding new songs that I've fallen in love with.

For example, a few months ago I found a vinyl of Portugal. The Man's 2023 album Chris Black Changed My Life for sale at a Barnes & Noble. I had heard a few songs on it that I really liked ("Summer of Love", "Doubt", "Plastic Island") and figured that I might as well own it since I liked 3 out of 11 of the songs on it.

I bought the vinyl, ripped it to iTunes (it didn't come with a download code but I've paid my dues already) and decided to listen to it from beginning to end, like how the vinyl would play. I listened through the album in its entirety while doing some Godot programming and really enjoyed it. So I listened through it again. And again. Each time I found a new part that I started to love. I'd pull up the album on my iPod to listen to a specific song and when it ended it would go to the next song on the album and I let it continue. I began listening to it less like a song that I liked that existed on an album and like a chapter in a movie. I'd start on one song and let the album play until the end.

By the end of the month I loved every single song on that album. I gained a newfound appreciation for not just each song on it but how they flowed together. Track 6 is the end of side A of the vinyl and also marks the transition from the first part of the album's somewhat joyful attitude to the second half's nihilistic view. The end of "Time's a Fantasy" into the beginning of "Doubt" is so well done and I never would have heard it if I had never listened to the whole album all the way through.

Is it the best album ever? Probably not, but I've gained 8 more beloved songs and a newfound appreciation for an album I initially didn't think too much about. There was something that I heard Atticus Ross mention in an interview with Trent Reznor for GQ that I think fits what I went through pretty susyncly.

"Albums that become my favorite I don't get the first time I listen to it." -Atticus Ross

I really recommend finding an album that you like 3-4 songs on and listen to it all the way through. Maybe you'll find 3-4 more songs that you'll like.

TV and Movies

I'll be honest with you, there is not really a reason to put a movie or TV show on an iPod unless it's in standard definition and even then it's a pain to do. My free and open-source video converter of choice, Handbrake, doesn't have a preset for an iPod Classic compatible format so you'll have to do some searching to find what you need and even then... is an iPod with no speaker really the form factor that you would want to be able to watch Hot Wheels World Race or the entirety of Cowboy Bebop on?

Yes. Because what's funnier than that?

Podcasts

When I worked at a warehouse job several years ago I got hooked on podcasts, specifically Dungeons & Dragons podcasts. Long episode lengths with long episode counts made for a dense backlog that I could listen to while doing the repetitive work needed and ever since I've continued to listen to a few of them week to week. Up until recently, I've been using AntennaPod on my phone to listen to podcasts but with iTunes I can also add podcasts to my iPod Classic. Not only can I listen to them on my iPod but, since the episodes are added through iTunes, I can also listen to them on my computer, something I wasn't able to do very easily using AntennaPod.

Other Stuff

The iPod enthusiast community are responsible for a cool little program called Rockbox that you can side-load onto certain iPods and other DAPs (Digital Audio Players). This allows you to do a bunch of cool stuff, like play Doom and listen to FLAC and MP3 files on the iPod, but personally I find the interface kinda wonky and difficult to use compared to the vanilla iPod experience. Still, it means that if Apple decides to stop making iPods usable through iTunes or stops supporting iTunes entirely I can continue to use my iPod, so I can't complain.

Eventually, I'd also like to do a flash mod of my iPod Classic, replacing the spinning hard drive inside with a board that allows microSD card flash storage for more reliable (and lighter) storage. And at that point I might as well put in a bigger battery while it's open... and swap out the case... I have a tendency to get a bit excessive when it comes to customization if you haven't noticed.

Outro

Okay, I've typed way more than I expected to about my iPod. This was supposed to be a Bluesky post but whoops.

I really recommend dusting off an old iPod if you have one lying around and taking ownership of your music back. It's seperate from your phone, meaning no notifications, distractions, data usage or battery drain, and can play music in just as good of a quality, if not better. And even if you don't have an iPod you can definitely find a DAP that will work just as well. Support artists, not scummy companies that take advantage of them.

#music