What happened to MP3 Players?

How often do you see someone using an iPod these days, let alone a stand-alone MP3 player? Odds are, you’ve forgotten such a thing ever existed. Perhaps you have brief moments of recollection when you see a generic MP3 player being sold at a pharmacy, or find an old iPod charger while cleaning out your drawers. So, what happened to those things?

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The first commercial DAPs (Digital Audio Player) have roots dating to the late 1990’s, but the technology actually extends all the way to the late 1970’s. The invention of the Personal Digital Audio Player is attributed to Mr. Kane Kramer, who would be recognized by Apple as the inventor of the Digital Audio Player in 2007. Kramer’s invention was referred to as the IXI — it was capable of 1 hour of playback and featured an LCD screen, but never saw mass commercial production.

A technical drawing of the IXI

Almost 20 years later, AT&T would create the FlashPAC digital Audio Player. In conjunction with the release of the FlashPAC, AT&T also released a web-based music download service; both of which would eventually serve as the foundation for Apple’s iPod and iTunes ecosystem. Personal audio players continued to improve incrementally over the next several years with different companies taking different approaches — from proprietary audio file codecs (AT&T’s Perceptual Audio Encoding), to memory storage systems (utilizing laptop hard drives vs. flash memory vs. networked streaming).

It wouldn’t be until 1998 with the release of the Rio PMP300 by Diamond Multimedia Systems, that the Personal DAP would substantially enter the mainstream market.

The Rio PMP300

Around this time the MP3 codec was gaining exponentially in popularity and garnering the interests of investors and consumers alike in regard to the new and powerful industry of digital music. Interest in the industry was further spurred following a legal dispute filed against Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, who claimed that the player violated the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. The legal proceedings concluded with a ruling that the Rio did not violate copyright laws, essentially finding that because the device did not actually record content, and instead only contained content, that it fell under fair use.

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Between 1998 and 2005, the world would see the release of many DAPs by prominent companies, including: Compaq, Creative Technology, Cowon Systems, Archos, Apple, Microsoft, SanDisk, et al. These devices came in a variety of capabilities and designs.

A small variety of DAPs

The first Apple iPod was released on October 23rd, 2001 featuring a monochrome screen and utilizing a 1.8" Toshiba hard disk. The initial success of the iPod was relatively limited for several years and iterations of the iPod, until 2004 with the release of the 3rd Generation iPod, when sales would skyrocket alongside digital music purchases via iTunes.

The massive increase in usage of the iPod and iTunes was in part caused by Apple’s decision to add PC compatibility outside of their own Apple operating systems. Apple would continue to aggressively market and develop their brand’s DAP to the point that it would enter common vernacular, with people often referring to any DAP (regardless of brand) as an “iPod”.
In 2004, Microsoft began its initial attempts to enter the Portable Media Player (PMP) industry with the release of the Zen Portable Media Center. The Zen was co-developed by Creative, utilized a specialized version of Windows CE, and was positioned to compete directly against Apple’s iPod.

Creative Zen Portable Media Center

As Apple’s market share of the DAP and PMP industry continued to grow larger, companies would also continue to develop their own devices and systems in competition. Innovations followed the improvement of technology over the 00’s — OLED screens, touch pads and touch screens, expanding memory storage, codec development, wireless capabilities, and integration into existing ecosystems.

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So, if the DAP and PMP industry was so huge, with large companies spending millions in development and marketing, where did they all go?

In 1999, the Samsung SPH-M2100 was released as the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 capability in South Korea. In 2000, a U.S. version was released as the Samsung SPH-M100 — the first MP3 capable mobile phone in the country. The MP3 capable cell phone was a massively successful innovation, and by the mid 2000’s more MP3 capable cellphones were being sold than the entire DAP/PMP market combined. Apple recognized this trend of multi-media enabled phones, and began development of the iPhone in 2004.

The release of the first generation iPhone in 2007 was a catalyst for the intertwined mobile phone/DAP/PMP market. Sales of the iPhone would eventually lead to a brief period where Apple was the third largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue, after Nokia and Samsung. Apple aggressively marketed the iPhone and forged a variety of partnerships and contracts with cellular carrier companies, creating record-sales and overtaking massive shares of the mobile phone market. Competing companies would also turn to the development of smartphones as the all-in-one solution to communication and digital media consumption, leaving behind the arguably dead-end DAP market. Prominent companies not directly involved in the manufacture or design of mobile phones would go on to focus on more specialized applications, such as audio driver and equipment, or abandon the development of high-end DAPs altogether. (Archos, for example, now develops android smartphones)

1st Generation iPhone

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In the author’s opinion, the innovation of the MP3 capable mobile phone alone can be considered the primary reason for the short-lived stand-alone DAP/PMP industry. The premise of the technology was, relatively speaking, obsolete before it began. That is not to say that the development of DAPs did not have monumental effects on the legality of music-sharing, technological progress, and the very culture of music. Rather, that it was a martyr to the advancement of the multimedia devices we now consider standard in function. (Show me a smartphone that does not have MP3 capability)
The world of the DAP/PMP was an era of innovation and experimentation, it enabled millions of people to experience music in a new and very personal way, and it shaped our society into what it is today.