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Craig Clemens

September 10, 2014
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Ever since this awkward, comic sans-ish, comparatively small announcement 13 years ago, the music world was completely put on it’s head. This became the flash point as the death of the $20 CD, rode the crest of the “music piracy” wave after Napster and Kazaa had been sued out of existence, and re-created and centralized the marketplace where we all get our music (iTunes) and made it, as Steve Jobs put it, ultra-portable.

As the next phase of music streaming, syncing, and cloud-based media storage become prevalent, the iPod has become obsolete. The “media player” as we know it doubles as so many other things – our PS4’s, Xbox’s, iPhones, Android phones, all of these things double already as our “portable media players” as well as our home entertainment systems. Where do our, now old school, click-wheel iPod’s fit into that scenario?

Quick answer is: they don’t. In conjunction with the announcement of their iPhone 6 (and 6 Plus) Apple quietly removed click wheel iPods from their website. Although the iPod Touch is still available, it’s only a matter of time before this one bites the dust as well, especially since it’s priced at $199, exactly the same price as the new iPhone 6. The writing is on the wall for the iPod.

By the end of this decade we’ll be looking back at this thing that was “the size of a deck of cards” in the same way that we look now at the shock-absorbing portable CD player, or cassette player.

Not only is this the end of the iPod, but in being the biggest portable media player on the market for so many years, this may be the end of the portable media player in general. It is the end of an era.