Portable music enhances walks, drowns out the noise of traffic, lets you avoid listening to horrible music on road trips when you’re not in charge of the car stereo, gives you something to do on plane trips, and in general helps you avoid dreaded human contact. I have been through many portable music players throughout the
years, and tried almost all of them. Walkman, Discman, MP3 players,
and streaming with a smart phone. I’ve noticed that each of them have their own
unique pros and cons. And the most technologically advanced players aren’t
necessarily the best ones, I’ve come to conclude. I will go through them
chronologically, and in the end give them my own personal ranking. Because I randomly felt like it.
Sony Walkman / Portable Cassette Player
Arriving in the early
1980s, this was the first truly portable music device that broke into the
mainstream. Sony was the premier manufacturer of these with their Walkman,
although off-brand versions exist (you don’t want to get these, generally
speaking). These were popular until the late 90s, when cassettes themselves
fell out of fashion.
Pros
·
Compact size, especially in later versions. They could fit in your
pocket, or sometimes had a clip on the back to clip to your jeans.
·
They don’t skip like a CD.
·
Cassettes are durable. You can drop them on the ground and they’ll
be fine.
·
The Walkman itself is fairly durable. There are limits of course,
but it will usually survive being dropped a few times.
·
Many had a feature for listening to radio stations; and radio
stations were better to listen to in the Walkman’s heyday than today. Some
extra fancy ones could pick up TV signals too, that you could listen to. This
wouldn’t work today because all the signals are digital.
Cons
·
A lot of small parts means something will inevitably go wrong
mechanically. Most often, the belt inside snaps, rendering it inoperable;
unable to play, fast forward or rewind. As I have found out, every Walkman
model uses a different belt, it’s not one size fits all. And you have to be
able to take it apart to replace the belt once you get the correct one from
somewhere. It’s better to just get another Walkman when this happens. The
longest I’ve ever had a Walkman work before this happens is about two years.
Usually it lasts less than a year. This might be because they’re all over 25
years old at this point, but I’ve rarely had as many belt problems with a cassette deck on a boombox or stereo.
·
Cassettes are only so long. The longest are two hours, but most
are significantly shorter, especially if it’s an official release and not a
mixtape. So if you’re going to be listening for an extended period you need to
carry extra cassettes with you.
·
Cassettes don’t have the best sound quality, obviously. Not that I
mind, but some people do.
·
Cassettes can get warped or eaten up. And this always seems to
happen more often in a Walkman than on a stereo or boombox.
·
You have to change the batteries.
·
You have to fast forward and rewind. It’s not easy to skip tracks.
Portable CD Player
All the rage when I was in
school back in the late 90s and early 2000s. These allowed you to listen to CDs
on the go. All the cool kids in their baggy jeans quickly ditched the Walkman
for these, which were sometimes called Discman. I even had a backpack with a pocket specifically designed for a
portable CD player. Everyone assumed they were an improvement over the Walkman, but in
retrospect, were they really?
Pros
·
CDs have better audio quality than cassettes.
·
At the point these devices were popular it was much easier to buy
CDs than cassettes, especially for newer bands. I never saw Linkin Park or
System of a Down albums on cassette in 2001. Even without the “coolness” factor
at the time, it was more practical to have a CD player for newer releases. Note that this no longer applies today, with CDs actually becoming rarer than vinyl records and cassettes.
·
Fairly portable, especially if you have big pockets on your baggy
jeans to slide them into.
·
Not as susceptible to internal mechanical issues like a Walkman
is.
·
Skipping tracks is easy on a CD, no rewinding or fast forwarding.
Cons
·
CDs skip. All it takes is a smudge or a minor scratch and that’s it.
They’re a much more fragile medium than cassettes.
·
What’s more, playing them in a portable CD player just gave them
more opportunities to skip whenever they were shaken, even if the disc itself
was pristine. Most of the portable CD players boasted “anti-skip mechanisms”.
These didn’t usually work. Maybe on the early, more expensive models they did,
but they were never completely impervious. So you can forget about going for a
jog while listening to a Discman, your CD will most likely be inaudible.
·
CDs are 80 minutes long at the most, while standard blank
cassettes were usually 90 minutes, sometimes longer. So you will have to bring
a lot of CDs with you for extended listening periods. Getting yourself a CD
binder made this easier, but it’s still another thing you would have to carry
around.
·
Changing the batteries out.
·
They were wider than the Walkman, because of the shape of a CD.
There wasn’t much of a way around this problem. It’s never going to fit in your
front pocket or clip onto your jeans. Maybe this was partly why everyone wore
baggy jeans with huge leg pockets back then.
·
In my experience, they are more fragile than a Walkman, and if
dropped would break more easily. This is basically inevitable, and the usual
cause of death for these devices.
Mp3 Players
Everyone assumed this would
be the final evolution of portable music players when these came out, but they
finally started to fall out of fashion in the mid-2010s or so (which is of course around when I got my first one), although you can
still find them for sale at some places. There were a lot of different models
and makes over the years so it is harder to talk about the pros and cons and
have them be universally applicable. The first ones to gain popularity were
iPods, which I never actually had. There were various cheaper, off-brand MP3
players. I have had two different ones. They solved a lot of the cons of both
the Walkman and Discman, but, they have their own shortcomings. I can only
speak from experience.
Pros
·
You don’t have to worry about the fragility of the medium. MP3s
can never get scratched, warped or eaten up by the player. They won’t skip if
you’re running. They’re basically guaranteed to play.
·
They’re also very durable and can be dropped without breaking.
Mine have outlasted any of the other portable music players I ever had.
·
They’re super tiny, very easy to have in your pocket.
·
MP3 audio quality is usually just like CD quality. Only extreme
audiophiles could tell the difference.
·
MP3 Players hold lots of data. Even the cheapie ones can hold at
least two gigabytes, giving you hours of music without having to carry extra
cassettes or CDs with you. You just get the music off your computer.
·
Most don’t use batteries and charge via a USB, so you don’t have
to spend money charging them. Some do use batteries if they’re an older or
cheap model, but it’s usually one AAA battery, not two AA batteries like the
Walkman and Discman.
·
Skipping through tracks is easy. Easier if you have a fancy one
with a screen, but generally no harder than skipping through a CD.
Cons
·
If you damage the USB outlet, that’s it. It is the Achilles heel
of the MP3 player. If this happens on one that uses batteries then you can at
least still listen to it, albeit without being able to add or delete any music.
That’s what happened to my first MP3 player, which still works with a AAA
battery but is now an uneditable playlist, like a really long mix CD. The USB
used to flip out of the device, but wear and tear eventually caused it to fall
off. But if it’s one that uses USB to charge, then it’s done for.
·
This only applies to the cheap ones I’ve had, but you have no
control over the playlist. The music appears where it will appear on the
playlist when you add it, at random, and there’s no way to arrange the songs.
All you can do is skip a track you’re not in the mood for. If there’s a
particular song you want to hear, you’re going to have to either skip through
hundreds of songs, or just wait. Shuffle has never worked on either of the
players I’ve had, it just ends up playing the same ten or so songs over and
over. As I said before I can only speak from experience, it’s probably different
with the fancy ones. I doubt the iPod is like this. But with mixtapes and mix
CDs you can at least make your own mixes.
·
They’re tiny enough to get lost if you’re not careful.
·
Space is limited. Granted there is a lot of space, vastly more
than a CD or cassette, but sooner or later you’re going to hit a limit, and
then have to start deleting older tracks to make room for new ones.
Smartphone Streaming
Come now, you know what a Smartphone looks like.
The way of the future!
Smartphones can do anything, including play music, so for a lot of people they
have even supplanted the MP3 player. If you already have a smartphone, why pay
extra for an MP3 player and go through the trouble of downloading music to put
on it? Connect it with Spotify, YouTube or another streaming website, and there
you go. It’s all very convenient. Are there flaws, though? Well, there are
prices for this convenience.
Pros
·
If you already have a smartphone, and you more than likely do if
you’re reading this, it’s convenient to use it to listen to music on.
·
Between just the two of them Spotify and YouTube have pretty much
every song ever recorded, just a click away. And there’s no limit to how much
music you can listen to on it, because it isn’t stored on the device or on
anything separate.
·
You don’t have to spend money on the music. Granted, this was always true
going back to cassettes which you could record on from the radio, but it’s even
easier now. It’s to the point where digital piracy is practically impossible to
criminalize. Unfortunately for musicians, actually paying for music is kind of
an act of charity these days. There is a catch for listeners, however, as we
will see in the Cons.
·
Skipping through tracks is simple. You can even build your own
playlists.
·
If you have wireless Bluetooth headphones, you don’t even have to
have the phone on your person to listen to music anymore.
Cons
·
You do have to be connected to WiFi for it to work. If you’re on a
phone plan you probably get a signal almost anywhere you go, but if you aren’t
on such a plan (as I am not), you have to be near a signal for it to work. And
if the internet goes out for any reason, you’re out of luck, and better hope you have some
physical media to come crawling back to. Granted, there are ways for offline
listening with premium accounts, if you feel like going through the hassle.
·
The artists make very little if any money. I read somewhere that
you have to play a song more than 6,000 times for the artist to make a dollar
on Spotify, and they make nothing off YouTube.
·
The ads. Yes, this is a big one. Your music will be interrupted
with annoying ads, killing the mood, unless you pay for a premium account to silence them. And
that just costs money every month. Money that’s going into a rich CEOs pocket
rather than to the artist.
·
There’s no guarantee the song will always be there. It could get
taken off the website due to copyright strikes, a failure to negotiate
contracts, or other reasons.
Conclusion
I would rank these four
methods of portable music as following:
4. Discman/ Portable CD
Player
3. Walkman
2. MP3 Player
1.
They all have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. I have used all four at one time or another. Portable CD players were just a pain overall, even the Walkman was better because it was more durable and didn’t skip every time you sneezed or whatever. CDs work better for stationary listening or for playing in the car, not for being on the go. As much as I have a soft spot for cassettes I have to admit MP3 and streaming is a lot more convenient. At the moment I do not have a working Walkman because the two I have both have broken belts, which tells you all you need to know about that. My old MP3 Player lasted about four years before the USB accident, and I’ve had my current one going on three years. None of the Walkmans lasted that long. Outside of sentimental reasons there’s no real reason to have a Walkman anymore. They are kinda cool to still have if you come across one, but it’s just not practical. If I were on a phone plan with WiFi anywhere I go I probably would stream music on my walks, but because I’m not, I have an MP3 player instead, which I think is more reliable as a portable music player anyway, as long as I keep it charged. It’s the same reason I still use VHS tapes and DVDs, I like having something I own that I can listen to any time without it randomly disappearing one day, and I don’t like having to depend on WiFi signals or pay monthly fees to silence ads. I like that I can just pay for it once and it’s mine. But, the smartphone’s advantages outweigh the MP3 player’s, if only by a narrow margin. This is due to the convenience, the multiple functions of a smartphone, and the unlimited capacity for music powered by the internet making it easy to hear virtually any song you could possibly want to hear. I think the best way is to have both, actually. That way if you have internet problems you still have an MP3 player to fall back on.
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