So, Netflix bought Warner Brothers for several million dollars. Spotify promotes AI music. Every streaming service has been continually raising their prices. Everyone is tired. Well, do I have some good news for you. Everyone is SO tired, that analog technology is making a HUGE comeback. Vinyls, CDs, DVDs, mp3 players, iPods, and more analog tech is having a huge renaissance right now. I’m very glad that I have kept my DVDs and my DVD/Bluray player. I got back into iPods in 2024 and recovered my old iTunes account.

For DVDs, I have so many DVDs from back in the day. I have 3 TV shows: Glee, Rugrats, and Hey Arnold. I ditched paid streaming services about two years ago, mainly because of the increasing prices. I use the free streaming apps such as Roku, Tubi, regular YouTube, and PBS/PBS Kids when I do stream. There is surprisingly alot of content on the free streaming platforms too.

For music, I never paid for Spotify. I only used the free version. On my phone, I was more partial to the free version of YoutubeMusic, which was formerly Google Play Music. In, 2024, I had wanted an mp3 player while i was in the midst of turning an old phone into a storage device. I grabbed a cheap Amazon player to start with. the player is small, has bluetooth capabilities and a 3.5mm jack. It has space for a microSD card, so i grabbed a 32 GB card. It was a few weeks later while scrolling on Reddit, when I found the r/iPod and r/iPodClassic subreddits. It was like hitting a goldmine. I had an iPod 3rd gen Nano back in my teen years, so I was stoked to find these subreddits.

Ebay was where I found all the iPods and iPod parts that would be needed to dive back into this. I filtered my search to USA sellers and free shipping. I bought the first iPod in like April 2024. It was a 5th gen Classic, also known as an iPod Video. I bought a new battery along with it. Grabbed an electronics toolkit from iFixIt. Started watching some repair videos and tutorials. Shimmied the iPod open, ended up cracking the screen. LOL. Bought another one on Ebay. Also, i would like to note, the iPods that costs the least at the time, were ones labeled as “for parts, not working”, so I paid less than $80 USD for them. Grabbed an iFlash board from eBay and went to Walmart and picked up some SD cards. The iFlash board is an SD card reader thing, it enables you to swap out the mechanical harddrive from the original iPod for an SD storage solution. The SD storage solution allows for more space and makes the weight of the iPod lighter.

So, on the second try, I successfully opened the iPod. replaced the battery, replaced the storage, and went to work on finding my old iTunes account. Note, all this was being done with a Windows 11 laptop. Downloaded iTunes from the iTunes/Apple website instead of Microsoft store. I remembered my iTunes email but forgot my password, so I created a new password. Once that was done, I plugged in the iPod and went to getting it set up. The setup process was pretty straightforward. Once the iPod is plugged into the computer and connected to iTunes, if the iPod has music on it, you can choose to keep the music or erase it and start fresh by doing a full restore. On the particular iPod I was working on, it had a few songs on there but none that interested me. So, I chose to restore the iPod. The restore process took a few minutes. Once the iPod is restored, you can then add music to it.

Adding music is simple with iTunes. Since I had found my library, I just synced my whole iTunes library to the iPod. iTunes still has their store component too, although songs now cost $1.29, whereas back when I first had an iPod, songs were 99 cents. As part of this process, I also took the time to back up my iTunes library on an external hard drive. If you aren’t familiar on how to back up your iTunes library, when your iPod is plugged into the computer, go to your file explore and locate your iPod. it should be listed as a drive. Toggle the button that says, ‘show hidden folders’. Once that is done, a folder called, ‘iPod Control’, that is where all your music from your iTunes library is located. The music is labeled with 4 random capital letters, but its your music. Copy that entire folder to your computer and to an external hard drive. Depending on how big your library is, will depend on what size external hard drive you need. I have a 1 TB hard drive because I have more than just my music to back up.

After doing all this my iPod was now updated and ready to be used. For redundancy though, I did add music to that Amazon mp3 player I have. A few months later, I bought more iPods. Same search criteria as before, and scored a few nanos and another iPod Video. Made some cosmetic changes to the iPods and they’ve been going strong. I will say that, the iPod Nanos, cannot be upgraded with storage or battery updates, but the ones I have, two 3rd gen Nanos and a 4th gen Nano, are doing okay. In total, I now have a modded Classic 5th gen/Video, a Classic 6th gen, 2 third gen Nanos, and a 4th gen Nano. I put the Amazon mp3 player in my car.

As streaming gets more convoluted and expensive, more people are rightfully switching to analog technology. As I said earlier, I am very glad i kept my DVDs. Returning to iPods and mp3 players has also been fun. The prices for iPods have gone up on eBay, but there are several versions of iPods that are modifiable. I have the iPod Videos, but the iPod Mini, the iPod Photo(4th gen classic), and the first and second gen iPod Classics are also available. When buying on eBay, be sure to filter to your specific region and whatever parameters work best for you. You can also find iPods on Facebook Marketplace and at local pawn shops and thrift stores. If you want to get as much information as possible, there are countless YouTube videos on this. There are the r/iPod and r/iPodClassic subreddits as well. Music can be purchased from iTunes, Bandcamp, Qbouz, old CDs that you may still have, or other ways. Most importantly, have fun.