My mp3 player, a first generation iPod Touch, broke a few weeks ago so that got me thinking. It seems like I have always been behind the times when it came to music technology. My taste in music isn't old, just my technology.
Let's review:
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| Not my old one but you get the idea |
I grew up listening to records and the radio on a vacuum tube record/radio combination. It did have FM which was a plus but it was so heavy, I couldn't move it as a child. This was the mid 1980s and cassettes were plentiful.
My father gave me his busted boombox that he used to use on construction site jobs. It had two cassette decks so I could dub music from one tape to another. We went to the library and I checked out two tapes to copy. One was Pump by Aerosmith and some other one I can't remember. I think my father borrowed Meatloaf to listen to in the car. He gave me some blank tapes and I copied a few more from the library or off the radio stations through the years. This was the late 1980s and CDs were just coming out. I used that boombox until 1999 when I left it at work and someone threw it in the dumpster. I dug it out the first time but was too late the second time. It looked like trash but the radio still worked even with the broken antenna.
I bought a Sony Walkman in the 1990s; cassette player of course. I used this a lot throughout the early 1990s. I went to Thailand for my Midshipman cruise in 1999 and brought my Walkman on the plane for the long trip. I changed planes in Japan so there were a lot of Japanese onboard and they always have the latest technology. The Japanese guy sitting next to me couldn't help himself and had to comment on my Sony Walkman from 1990 since CDs had been out over a decade. He showed me his minidisc player (anyone remember those?). I just wanted something for the plane ride.
I had CDs but my only CD player was in my car. The car didn't come with a CD player. I didn't want to keep buying the same album on cassette and my 1988 Toyota Celica factory tape deck started eating more and more tapes. In 1998 I wore out Led Zepplin IV and Master of Puppets on cassette so I upgraded to a CD player for my car. I bought second hand CDs in the record store after that.
So it is now 2000 and I have a new job after graduating college and moving out. I'm finally on the cutting edge of getting music. I have a new laptop and cable internet (thanks to splitting the bill with four other roommates). I'm downloading mp3s on Napster everyday. I have thousands. I buy big speakers for my computer. I've got all the music I ever wanted for free and keep finding more. I bought an mp3 player when they first came out. I bought the extra SD card to hold another 30-40 songs. I've got like 100 songs on this first generation mp3 payer. Then Napster gets shut down. I'm back to CDs.
It's the early to mid 2000s and I'm the guy at the gym rocking a CD player belt while everyone else is using Apple's first iPod. A few years go by and I get satellite radio for work. I buy a portable satellite radio player that won't work in the gym but I can download and replay 12 hours of music daily. So that works.
Finally in 2007, the iPod touch is released. I have no interest because I'm still using my CDs or satellite radio player. Well my friend gets the iPod touch and she gives me her old Microsoft Zune. Now I'm using the Zune for the next seven years until it flat out stops working in 2014. As compensation I get the now used first generation iPod touch purchased in 2007.
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| Now I'm using my phone to listen to music at the gym |
As I said at the beginning of this post, it is 2016 and my iPod touch is now dead. I have started streaming music on my phone at the gym and when I buy a new phone after the new year, I'll buy extra storage to move all of my songs onto the phone. In the meantime, I can't be bothered to even download Pandora and search for music stations.
I'm not an old guy and I seem to keep up with everything else: news, phones, movies; I guess I am just used to being behind when it comes to music technology.
