Hunting For a Nice Music Player and Failing Miserably
1/10/25
Hello again it’s me the internet hater. Here’s another post about the internet that I am uploading to the internet.
Aren’t you fed up with Spotify? I don’t know if I am really but it’s good to get offline in any way possible. Aren't you fed up with Apple? I am, and I’ll always be angry at them starting the trend of removing headphone jacks from their phones.
I mean, seriously, I’ve had 2 adapters and one broke from being taken outside once?? Can’t charge your phone while you listen to anything, need to turn on bluetooth to get the damn thing to connect which drains your battery, but lets just plug it back in, oh wait, you can’t, because your headphones are filling up the charging port. Stupid device. I’m not ready for a ‘dumb phone’ as it’s been dubbed, since I do need Whatsapp for work and whatnot, and especially because it would require buying a new phone. I wouldn’t be able to keep all my pictures I have in my current phone, I couldn’t write something in my phone and add it to a file that I can get on my laptop, I want to check my emails…
…alright I just don’t want to get rid of it. Sue me.
What I am ready for, though, is to start weaning myself off Spotify. It decides on a whim whether or not it’ll let you play the song you just clicked on, then it limits how many songs you’re able to skip, and then it plays over a minute of ads between every 2 songs. The web player with an ad blocker (uBlock Origin 4 lyfe get it while you can) is pretty functional and cuts out a lot of the extras that you get with official music videos on YouTube. The quality is also pretty decent compared to YouTube. But everything else surrounding it… man.
I swore off algorithmic recommendations years ago. The only way I will listen to new music is if it’s recommended to me by a real person, whether that be in a forum I’m lurking in, selected for someone’s YouTube video, or just any way where a human being decided that it was worth sharing. No autoplay. Nuh uh.
So even if Spotify recommendations weren’t already dogshit, that was another reason to get off the platform! Do not open your Discover Weekly.
Now, I don’t pay for Spotify. Never have, never will. But I know plenty of people who do. It’s $12USD per month!! And £12GBP!! That’s more expensive in the UK technically! That’s like $16 per month. Who the fuck is paying that! Not! Me!
£144 for a year of Spotify premium. That’s more than enough to get yourself something nice, like good headphones, or a decent music player.
Do you like my segue into the meat of this post? Yeah? Cool. Now onto the actual reason I'm writing.
Many people were inspired by this lovely video that I have already linked on this site and can’t help but link again because it’s so damn good. It’s worth the 45 minute watch.
Since I sorta prefer second hand items anyway (and, y’know, they’re cheaper) I’m on a semi-active hunt for a second hand mp3 player. My requirements are as follows:
- Guaranteed good audio quality
- Can take a 64gb micro SD which I have already purchased
- Able to play through a full album in one go, even if I have to make playlists for each album
- Ideal - Tactile buttons
- Ideal - Bluetooth connection in case I choose some wireless earbuds in the future
Things that I don't care about at all:
- Wifi - Apparently some of the more modern players have Wifi but I couldn’t care less about that.
- Album art quality - People actually care about that apparently? I guess if you're especially proud of your music collection I can see that, but, eh.
I think my standards are relatively low, and yet I can’t find anything that appeals to me. I’m scared of dumping £100+ into something that turns out to be awful, and I don’t know any way of testing these things out before I buy them for good. Reading reviews is the best I can get to testing, but it seems that everyone who’s into music and audio players either have an expansive collection of both headphones and players already (and thus terribly inflated standards on qualities I never knew existed), or more disposable income than I’ll ever see. Seriously, $150 is not ‘budget-friendly’. Who are you people.
My current options aren’t too bad, but I guess I am pretty picky.
Arguably the most available option is to suck up my pride, learn to part with my money, and buy an iPod from my local CeX. I don’t know much about iPods, but my experience with Apple products tells me that I’ll need to be careful with handling these things. They’re also, what, £130+ each? For second hand products? Admittedly I haven’t done any research into iPods, since I never anticipated buying them… that’s it, really.
Second option is a Hifi Walker H2, which I’ve heard plenty of positive reviews about, including from the linked video earlier. I did manage to get my hands on one from eBay, for ~£75 I think, but it was kinda iffy. I need a working headphone jack, and I guess the ‘fully functional’ label was determined by testing it with bluetooth earbuds. Because it didn’t fucking work. Had to return it. Do you know how hard it is to find them on eBay? Or any site that isn’t making you pull out £125 each for them?
However, I did manage to get a hold of some wireless earbuds and try it out. It wasn’t bad, I guess. The interface was kinda funny, but maybe that was because the scroll wheel on mine was kinda funny too. Apparently you can’t queue up songs on it, and I can’t recall anyone finding a workaround for this. Gah. The weight was supposed to be a drawback, but I was quite fond of how it felt in my hand, so I’ll keep that in mind when searching through reviews. Weight is good, for me.
Third option is probably the most accessible for me - just buy a second hand phone and use it for music. My main concern is the audio quality, and that it probably won’t be the best. I mean, my own phone is abysmal, and it’s supposed to be a good phone (iPhone 8 is still modern, right?). Other than that… I’d want one a little smaller than the average phone, and a little more durable than average. The price is the main draw, it ought to be much cheaper than an mp3 player, but when the price gets too low it’s a little risky. I just saw a $6 android on AliExpress. No chance.
Best options are to search on eBay, again, and again and again, because I’ll never find what I want on there. I guess I have stuff like Vinted or Facebook, but the former doesn’t do electronics much and the latter I don’t have an account for. I probably wouldn’t be able to figure out how to use Facebook now. I feel old. God, what else is there? Charity shops? Do you see any phones in there? It wouldn't be difficult to find a used phone, I’d just prefer to be a little picky here and go for something a little more ‘aesthetic,’ you feel.
Fourth option, a lot of people talk about Hiby as a budget brand, but I never see them being sold for under $80USD. I guess that’s considered a low price? Whatever man. At least I’d get a decent product. If only I could get them second hand in my area, nobody seems to be selling them. This one is only on here because I see people go crazy over this brand. No idea if it’s actually good.
Fifth option, get a tiny generic mp3 player that only plays random songs. Cheap, and works, but how much audio could you really put in those things? Most of my favourite songs are 7+ minutes, and I want them to be played at Spotify’s quality, minimum. So that’s ~1MB per minute of audio, and 1000MB in 1GB. The real cheap ones usually have 128MB of space, and can’t take memory cards larger than 8GB.
I’d rather not go there. If I have to spend money, I want it to be good.
It’s not like I don’t have this kind of money!! I could easily buy something high-tech for £250 without it putting a huge dent in my bank as long as I’m a little frugal for the next month or so. I’m lucky to have some decent money saved up. And yet, the reason I have that extra money in the first place is because I’m so damn picky with what I buy! the reason I have extra money is the reason I won’t spend it.
A blessing and a curse. I think it’s a blessing, my family thinks it’s a curse.
Once I get this stupid thing - which I will, I’ll promise that to myself - I’ll see how it influences the way I consume music. Maybe it’ll impact how I consume other forms of media too. It’s just getting a nice one in the first place that’s holding me back. Agh.
Anyway I’m kinda hungry right now. I made lemon cake last night and it turned out awful and I’m eating it anyway because goddammit it’s my cake and I put effort into it. I put £2 worth of butter into it. Yes I really am that cheap. What else has been going on… I should prepare some stuff for Halloween, maybe give out treats this year. Not sure if I’ll dress up, most likely not. Currently giving javascript a shot and it’s not as difficult as I anticipated. I have got to get my navbars in order and hopefully javascript will be the answer. Met a new cat in my area with huge eyes. Very cute girl. I’ve started writing 3 other blog posts since the last one but I was never happy with them. Either they went off topic or the contents are too embarrassing to post.
Since everything I just wrote was kinda nothing I’ll give you some songs that I’ve been enjoying to try and compensate. They’re on YouTube because I feel like I’d be wasting space for file hosts. Hope they’re not too bad.