This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod.

If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?

> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

Is this surprising?

They are a commodity (you can literally build a fairly decent for less than $10 in parts) so therefore are low profit. Brands you have heard of generally don't want to play in commodity markets.

The alternative is to move upmarket where prestige or specific features are important:

> some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

There you go.

> Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?

They can and do. Look on Amazon.

They call into the two buckets you outline above. Just buy one of the $50 ones from the companies you haven't heard of.

There's an irony here, because Sony do make MP3 Walkmans based on Android: https://electronics.sony.com/audio/c/walkman-digital-recorde...

IDK I've got some rando Chinese product that looks pretty much exactly like a late-2000s iPod "classic" and has some fairly generic Android interface including a decent music player. I think it cost like $40.

> which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players

the burning answer is really, by the time you've chosen a modern merchant soc, and put a screen on it, you're really more or less at the same BOM cost as a very low end android device (and frankly, the soc bsp you chose is likely to be android/aosp to begin with)

so you're basically competing head to head with every shitphone maker out there, and they have economies of scale. you do not.

> Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware

and so... now you're competing with simple smartphones. you're going to charge more for a fancy case for something that requires to be carried separate from your phone and offers zero additional advantage?

there's a huge market for external mobile DSPs for this reason. this is an example of an entry level one https://www.microcenter.com/product/705193/moondrop-freedsp-...

btw, im sure someone like shanling is making exactly what you're thinking of, but they often have limited production runs and still cost within the same range as a basic android phone (usually a bit more)

Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?

Because you can do that with any phone and just not use the phone part?

Have you looked at fiio? They’ve been doing it a while and aren’t crazy expensive https://www.fiio.com/player

https://a.co/d/055SGJE1

MP3s have been on the way out for a long time, being replaced by music subscriptions. And "MP3 player" is a feature of other devices, not its own device. Both my Apple Watch and Garmin watch can store and play MP3s without a phone; both also support music subscriptions.

The only market is in the "enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much", just like it is currently for vinyls and DVD players.

they do. tons of them. https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-mp3-player.html

Did you even read the article? They mention Sony sells a new Walkman just like what you mention https://www.sony.co.uk/walkman

Then we're just haggling over price though. Make more money and be less cheap. Also, I'd like a Ferrari and only pay $20 for it.

My understanding is there are decent MP3 players by places like Fiio at this point? Haven't used any of em in anger though

Though I have a walkman (that kinda sucks cuz it's android.... it's (USB-C AND annoying Android OS) XOR (Proprietary charging cable) from Sony nowadays

> Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?

Sony Walkmans are this, along with a bunch of the random mp3 players you would find on amazon. I don't know why some other people replying to you are acting like this doesn't exist.

The iPod was a product in an interesting time... if you ignore the screen, a modern mp3 player could be made as small as a SD card... as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen. Nobody wants to put the effort into something that's going to be as basic as a mp3 player.

> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

I recently got the Shanling M0s. It runs its own OS and seems to me completely at parity with what MP3 players used to be back in the day; in fact I think it's the best one I've ever had, and I've been buying those devices since the Diamond Rio. If more people just got one, Shanling would no longer be a company nobody's ever heard of, and the economics would change to further bring down the price too (although I think it's not all that bad right now).

I think you’ll find that is what modern Walkmans are…

Apple got it right with the original iPod, and your ask, and others, is just to extend it to modern times. A lot of these comments simply aren't helpful, and people chiming in know it. For me, I was looking for

1) Music player that holds a ton of songs.

2) Lossless.

3) No touch screen control.

4) Battery that is long lasting and semi-replaceable.

5) Smaller than modern phones.

6) Great software experience, which for me meant Apple Music compatible.

7) Wired. Not Bluetooth.

A $400 Sony Android-based player doesn't meet 3, 4, nor 5. Most importantly, $400 for a product that doesn't meet some pretty important criteria is ridiculous. A shitty tiny Chinese player isn't going to meet 3, 4, 6 and it'll die on you in a couple of years and you'll be back at square one.

My solution was to buy a 5.5 Gen iPod off eBay ($100), a microSD card carrier (iFlash.xyz - $40), and four microSD cards (Back in my day, $50 each for 256gb). Yes, I had to open the iPod, but yes, it checks all my boxes. And it came in less than the Sony player.

The demand isn’t that high for so much effort?

My "MP3 player" is a phone with Musicolet. If you really distrust phones, you can buy a cheap phone and use it only for that and nothing else. There are probably other offline MP3 players but this one seems pretty good. (It is hard to find a phone with an SD card slot and a headphone jack but that's a separate issue.)

I don't understand the question, Sony still sells a product line of both premium and cheaper mp3 player devices?

Although FiiO is probably the company to look at for these kind of products.

These companies did everything they could to get people off the "I own files I paid once" model and onto the perpetual "I pay for streaming" model. Of course they dont want to go back to that. It goes against the profit incentive which dictates all business decisions. That's how capitalism works on its most fundamental level.

> ... why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players?

I know the late 90s called and want their MP3 straight out of Napster and their 10 GB HDD back but you can safely up the ante to lossless FLAC files.

MP3 is, literally, 30+ years old and I traded my 10 GB HDD for a 1 TB NVMe SSD that could read an uncompressed dump of my entire 10 GB HDD in about two seconds.

FLAC files are only about 2x the size of 320 kbps mp3.

Really, it's 2026. We can do it (I do it).

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