At the start of the year I got myself a digital audio player (specifically this one) as part of trying to be less dependent on my phone. I'm gradually adding music (from Bandcamp, Qobuz and my old collection of ripped CDs and liberated iTunes files), podcasts (downloaded straight from the feed) and audiobooks (from Libro, though I plan on 'liberating' my Audible library too).
It's been an interesting little experiment, I love having a device with buttons! It's also super small which, to be transgender for a moment, is both aesthetically satisfying and great for my tiny lady pockets. The audio quality, generally, has also been noticeably better.
There have also been a couple of other fun little revelations too:
I realised, to my horror, that most podcasts do not pay as much attention to metadata as I do. I have a new appreciation for podcasts putting their episode number in the titles. This is an extra mark for audio dramas releasing on Bandcamp, where the metadata is automatically sorted.
Being a device intended for music listening, it doesn't save your place for podcast episodes or audiobook chapters (though you can enable a fast forward/rewind function). At first this was a bit frustrating but I quickly realised that when I was listening to an episode/chapter, I was committing to it, and found I was listening to more books and audio drama episodes as a result, rather than my attention span defaulting back to my usual comfort listens.
I realise this a very specific little rabbit hole that will not be for everyone but, as someone who really struggles with listening to things sometimes (especially after a full work day of listening to things) and someone who gets glued to their phone really easily, it's really helped me.
(for anyone interested, Midnight Burger & The Disordered Cosmos are my current listens)
EDIT: I thought I'd shared the tool I've been using to batch download podcasts, it's this one. It's command line which is a little daunting at first but it downloads everything: artwork, metadata, artist names. Great for getting series all in one go, straight from the RSS feed
EDIT EDIT: I have left Audible! And I also have my purchases downloaded and added to my DAP. For the curious, this is the tool I used
