Surprise! It’s Jason Toon being nostalgic again! But this edition of Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture, looks back to a time that (to an oldster like me) barely seems like the past at all.
I was braced for the obvious emotional gut punches of cleaning out a storage space. My wedding suit. My kids’ preschool artwork. The IKEA toy shelves I’d stayed up late assembling, now never again to hold their Playmobils and LEGO. Insert Loudly Crying Face emoji.
But I wasn’t ready for the surge of nostalgia that hit me when I found my old Rio Forge MP3 player. I suddenly remembered listening to specific songs on specific flights back then, and loading it up with Radio Disney favorites for a family road trip. This wonky little teardrop of a gadget had been my constant companion for the last few pre-smartphone years.
Did it still work? The Rio line, home to one of the very first MP3 players, was already defunct when I got this one from Woot at least 20 years ago. But I popped in a fresh AAA battery (no charging necessary!) and it fired right up, still in the middle of a song I had paused during the George W. Bush administration.
Walking with dinosaurs
No doubt the technology was more sophisticated in the many phones, laptops, and tablets I’ve had in the last 20 years. But how many of those would still work today? The heft and durability of 2000s MP3 players, the tactile experience of buttons and wheels rather than a touchscreen, is one reason why “The World is Basically Begging for Another iPod Right Now“, as Gizmodo puts it. Sales of both used iPods (up more than 40% across the board on resale site Back Market) and new MP3 players are climbing. “I can’t even count the number of [new] digital audio players I’ve seen in recent months,” writes Gizmodo’s James Pero.
Another reason, of course, is focus. Scrolling through the songs on my old Rio Forge, I remembered how much thought I put into what songs to load it up with. If I was out and about and didn’t feel like listening to anything I had with me, tough shit. So I had to anticipate a range of moods - some punk, some soul, some ‘60s pop, a little reggae or West African psychedelia - lest I be stranded in silence.
Would it really change the listening experience? On my morning walks, I replaced my phone with my prodigal MP3 player. My usual choice paralysis melted away. With only a few albums and a choice mix of 50 or so other songs to choose from, I did seem to spend a lot less time wondering what else I could listen to and a lot more attention on the music itself.
When I did scroll through the library, I wasn’t distracted or tempted to do anything else with the device, because it doesn’t do anything else. Just a monochrome LCD screen, some text menus, and some basic physical buttons: no recommendations, no notifications, blessedly no ads.
When I have to use my phone for everything, using my phone for anything feels more like an obligation. Choosing a Spotify playlist, paying my gas bill, and blocking scam texts mush together into one experiential slurry of “using my phone”. The vastly restricted library on my Rio Forge paradoxically feels like freedom. This thing is devoted to nothing but my music. The rest of the world can’t bother me here.
Radio gaga
As it happened, another retro digital device had recently come into our lives. Remember Internet radios? They made a bit of a splash in the late 2000s and early 2010s, dedicated appliances for browsing radio feeds from around the world, usually through a proprietary server maintained by the radio’s manufacturer.
Then smartphones happened. My wife loves radio, and uses iPhone apps like Radio Garden to wander the planet’s airwaves. But she also found herself wanting that experience somewhere different from where she turns in her timesheets for work. She just wanted a radio she could turn on and leave on all day, something she never needed to charge, that would never be interrupted by calls or texts. She asked for an Internet radio last Christmas. To be honest, I wasn’t sure anyone still made them.
“There are still a dozen small brands that sell internet radios,” said Greg Fadul, CEO of one of those brands, Grace Digital, in a story on Radio World. Some of the bigger names like Logitech had not only stopped making Internet radios, but also stopped supporting their URL servers, meaning existing devices could no longer connect to streams. But what Radio World calls “a vibrant niche market” has found “success in stealth mode”.
So I wrapped up the handsome Audizio Foza. After an hour learning the clunky, très aughts wheeled navigation, my wife added a bunch of her regulars to a Favorites list, then discovered a French oldies station, a good jazz station from New Jersey, and a Slovenian country music station where the steel guitars mix with accordions.
Of course, her phone can do all that and a million times more. Which is the problem. It reduces something she loves to the same category as all the tedious and/or toxic demands our phones make on us. A sturdy box on the bookshelf that does only one thing says “this thing is special.” Slovenian country music hits different when it’s not just one more shard of quirky content from the quirky content and marketing surveillance machine.
I’m also a fan of the physical media revival, but it’s tough to participate if you’re short of cash or space. Once you’ve bought these “dumb” digital devices, they’re yours. You can enjoy a similar level of focus to a physical media collection, without having to add new shelves to your home. I’ve started to think about getting a digital camera again. And my brother just bought a charging cable for his old iPod.
In some ways it’s amazing how the phone can do everything that took a dozen different devices before. I’d hate to have to carry around a GPS device and a music player and a texting device in my pocket. But on the other hand…it might be nice to just have a dedicated alarm clock on my bedside table instead of making sure I set my phone up to serve yet another purpose. What things do you have or want that could technically be done by your phone but just might be a little better on their own? Let’s talk in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
—Dave (and the rest of Meh)
These previous Shoddy Goods stories combine digital convenience with handcrafted timelessness:
When did we start calling old songs “oldies”? And when did we stop?
Why there probably won’t ever be a new physical media format
For more retro audio gear, cock an ear to Hammacher Schlemmer’s collection at The Best Portable Record Player and More.
Thanks for the blast from the past, Jason. I was an editor at PC Magazine in the 1990s and early 2000s, and all manner of these crossed my desk. Most went back to the OEM (if an item was worth more than $50, our policy was to return it after a review), but a couple pre-iPod players were always in rotation. And speaking of woot, I still have the Dick Tracy watch by Fossil that you all sent out to tech editors to garner some press. It's NIB in my closet. Now that I am recently unemployed but still 5 years shy of retirement age, I'm hoping to sell it to bridge the gap!