The long-awaited mp3 player long post!!
Everybody knows music streaming services suck. They spy on you, cram ads down your throat, allow AI slop music, and donāt pay the artists for beans. CDs are great, but carrying around more than 3 of them and finding something that can play them is a pain, and using youtube for music streaming has the same problems as spotify. The solution?
Now, if you donāt have a mp3 player, or havenāt since the 2000ās, youāre probably thinking of the iPod, or the zune, or whatever off-brand nugget you got during the mp3 player craze. Let me tell you, weāve since made massive advancements in mp3 player tech. If you thought the iPod touch was cool, mp3 players from amazon with android shoehorned in there are WAY better and more functional. With enough care, in all respects except for having mobile data, they can be as good, if not far better than, a phone.
I personally have one of said mp3 players with android shoehorned into it, and putting effort into getting music (as well as a host of many other, far more unnecessary things) has been the most worthwhile experience Iāve had in years. Want to get into beginner-level android shenanigans? Learn how to use an emulator? Get more tech literate in general? Just think itās funny to run Doom (yes, Iām serious) on basically an iPod? This is for you!
With all of that that being said, I humbly present to you: the one and only Medicalmishapwaiting2happen Official Guide To Mp3 Players!
PART I: MUSIC FILES AND WHAT TO DO WITH THEM
The best part about music files is thereās no ads! Thatās most of the draw, as well as being available offline, which is great for people who live in the middle of the Nowhere Woods With No Internet like I do. Despite the title of this post, mp3s arenāt your only option for songs ā they can be lossy, so if youāre a stickler for quality, FLACs are a good option! As for getting the files, thereās a million and one cd rippers out there, or (coughing very loudly) you may purchase and download mp3s from itunes.com legally. :)
As for how to play them, Iāve tried a few and really like Retro Music Player (https://retromusic.app/) - itās free, open source, customizable, ad-free, and has (albeit a finicky one) a tag editor included, if you care about metadata like I do. It supports old as beans android as well - I used it when I lost my mp3 player and got stuck using a phone from 2015 that had android 5.0 for my music playing purposes, so I can say with a decent amount of confidence it can run on most things. As for getting a proper mp3 collection, it takes time! Keep track of the songs you want to download on the notes app or whatever ā also, keep an up-to-date backup of the songs on an SD card/flash drive/etc. Crappy mp3 players do die on a momentās notice, so if you buy the wrong one and donāt have a backup, good luck trying to remember what you had on there. As for metadata, if itās important to you, use mp3tag (https://www.mp3tag.de/en/) (puddletag for a similar experience on linux.)
This is the fun part!! Everything in the second half is going to be things I personally have shoved on my mp3 player - and albeit not necessary for a vanilla mp3 player experience, these are just things Iād shove on most android devices just for the heck of it.
For DS games, which I love to have because theyāre offline and go along with the 2000ās vibe of mp3 players, I use MelonDS - (https://github.com/rafaelvcaetano/melonDS-android/releases) you can download the apk from the github - if you donāt know how to sideload apps on android, itās time to learn. (Iām kidding, but itās really easy and you should.) For an ad-blocker, because some music players have ads, either AdGuard (https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html) or blokada 5. (https://blokada.org/) These help with pretty much everything, but battery is a big one. For youtube, use a fork like invidious (Iām probably not supposed to post the link here) and for a browser use firefox or one of its forks (I use waterfox) ā if you insist on a chrome-like experience, chromite (https://github.com/uazo/cromite) works well enough. Some simpler windows games (made in rpg maker, renāpy, flash and HTML, and a few others, check their website if youāre interested) can run using joiplay (https://joiplay.net/) (I got dayshift at freddyās to run with this, just for the meme) and anything into proper windows territory can be achieved with winlator. For PDF viewing - since even the $20 knockoff mp3 players from amazon can view some kind of document file - I use readera. (Itās ad-free and has some really cool themes!) For apps that Iām not getting from github, f-droid is a very good alternative to google play, lots of good open-source stuff there. If you end up getting an mp3 player with an old android version, (or want to use an old phone as an mp3 player like I did,) apkmirror (https://www.apkmirror.com/) is a very good resource for getting old versions of apps. If you donāt want to go through the hassle of plugging in your computer every time you want to transfer a new batch of music files, proton drive (https://proton.me/drive) is a privacy-friendly, end-to-end encrypted alternative for google drive ā the free version also has 5 gigs of storage. On the theming side of things, nova launcher with any icon is what I use for my theme, personally, but thereās a million other launchers and themes out there. Because an mp3 player does in fact need to send discord messages, bluecord (https://bluesmods.com/bluecord/) is a customizable version of discord, supporting custom fonts, message colors, and backgrounds. For a privacy-respecting, decently customizable, keyboard, I recommend florisboard - (https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard) it's even got a very nice catpuccin theme for all my catpuccin fans out there. For a calculator, use desmos because it is objectively the best calculator there is. And yes, doom on android is a thing ā I canāt go sending links here, but it is out there. Finally, this isnāt something I personally use on my mp3 player, (I have on my phone and itās incredible, but I need storage space) but citra (https://citra-emulator.com/) is a fantastic nintendo 3DS emulator for android!
If youāre looking to buy an mp3 player, the ones with full-blown android are a bit pricey, so old phones do work incredibly well for this! If you have an old phone lying in a drawer, converting it into an mp3 player is one of the best things you can do with it. APKmirror will almost certainly have versions of the apps you need, and itās far better than letting it turn into e-waste. Mp3 players that are strictly music are still good, but do check reviews before buying ā some tend to die within a matter of days, like the first one I had. Unless audio quality is something really important to you, I donāt recommend the pricey professional-grade mp3 players ā I ended up getting one as a hand-me-down, and it ended up being functionally not much better than my $20 knockoff iPod nano.
...And thatās all, folks! Thank you so much for reading this far, if this post makes you get or want an mp3 player, thatās incredible. My mp3 player has been a running project for years, and so I may update this post with any additions I make ā Iāll add a few screenshots (taken from the mp3 player itself!) with examples of the software Iāve used down here, and again, thank you so much for reading!
^ From top to bottom, left to right: desmos scientific with inverted color scheme, the music player I use by dairy apps, (it's not the greatest but it's got a tag editor) waterfox with a custom home page wallpaper, and my NovaLauncher rice.
^ From left to right: readera with console theme, bluecord with hack font + custom message colors and background, and the rest of my my NovaLauncher rice with custom icons
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