I bought a modern iPod — not because I needed one, but because I realized I didn’t actually own most of the music I thought I did.
It began with my daughter’s intense love of music. I’m committed to keeping smartphones out of my kids’ lives until they’re teens, and that meant finding a way for her to enjoy music without an internet-connected device.
After discovering the Innioasis Y1 MP3 Player — a simple, offline digital audio player with Bluetooth and a headphone jack — I decided to pick one up for her upcoming birthday…and one for me too.
Check out Mike Rohde’s write up here:
That purchase sent me down a rabbit hole I didn’t expect: reclaiming the music I’ve accumulated over decades.
Recovering my Music
I knew I had music in a bunch of different places:
Albums I bought on Apple Music / iTunes and Bandcamp
Uploads and purchases from Amazon Music
A CD Collection I’ve owned since I was about 12.
I discovered that most of my owned music can be downloaded and backed up — relatively easily, I’m happy to say.
Using the Amazon Music app, I successfully downloaded roughly 1,000 songs I thought were lost to the cloud. The same thing goes for Apple Music; most of that was recoverable.
The most time consuming task will be ripping all of my old CDs, which I’m doing with an Apple SuperDrive.
Shifting From Renting to Owning
The internet is mostly rented land. Heck — Substack is more or less rented land (though you can export all of your data, for now).
I’m tired of renting music…especially when it’s so important to me. If my favorite albums get pulled from Apple Music or Spotify1 then I’m SOL.
So I’m making a shift. I want music files I truly own: DRM-free, locally stored, and untouched by the whims of corporate platforms. I don’t need discs, but I do want control.
This is now part of my ongoing Year of Digital Detox — not just quitting habits, but reclaiming what’s already mine.
Leave a comment on this post: do you own your music? Where do you buy it? What player do you use?
Yes I pay for both because I’m a sucker
