I see music everywhere! Mp3 players that Is!

Best Buy opened a huge loca­tion five min­utes away from my place. So I decid­ed to go for a small stroll and browse through the wares my big blue and yel­low neigh­bour had to offer. Espe­cial­ly since there is a three sto­ry Future Shop –which was acquired by Best Buy in 2001 for a thrifty $500 Mil­lion– three min­utes north on Yonge Street. As some of your may know, I have been home­bound for a while yet I was curi­ous to see what a futile exer­cise in lais­sez-faire cap­i­tal­ism looks like these days.

Obvi­ous­ly I have been out of the per­son­al elec­tron­ics must-have’s loop for some time. As lit­tle did I know the first pen­tad of the new mil­len­ni­um has been utter­ly over­run by the MP3 play­er.
Sure music is valu­able for self-expres­sion and one of the high­lights of being human, but since when do peo­ple must have a musi­cal play­er attached to their ears every­where they go?
I swear I can’t count five peo­ple down the street with­out one bop­ping their head left to right to some unheard beat. You would think them crazy if it were not for the tell-tale cables run­ning from their pock­ets to their heads.

No Sony, your Walk­man is been buried and dead, so don’t even try it, I won’t be writ­ing about you. Just stick with your cell­phones and playsta­tions. Any who, I sim­ply could not believe the store, aisle after aisle, if not of MP3 play­ers them­selves than of acces­sories for the damn MP3 play­ers.

So who is the man in this $4.3 bil­lion MP3 play­er market you ask? Who is at the top of the hill and the source of rav­en­ous envy to all its com­peti­tors? Why the aes­thete that is the Ipod of course. With 70 mil­lion sold in the last five years the Ipod com­mands now what Apple has been hav­ing wet dreams since its incep­tion back in ’76: A mass audi­ence who also hap­pen to be rabid con­sumers.

As I walked through the rows of Ipod speak­ers, car hold­ers, stereo add-ons and the ever need­ed Ipod socks (just $39.99 for a pack of six) real­ly, I am not kid­ding. I could not help feel­ing a lit­tle stu­pe­fied by all of this. Per­haps ‘over­whelmed’ would be a bet­ter word. After all, Apple is not the only one throw­ing their weight around. Oth­er com­pa­nies like Dell, Toshi­ba, Scan­disk, Sam­sung and many oth­ers have jumped into the band­wag­on. After all, if you build it even if it sucks, some­one is bound to buy it.

So on that note, just when you think you can see the end of the par­ty crash­er’s line. Here comes big broth­er Microsoft, elbow­ing every­one –as usual–out of the way as it tries to get in before MP3 play­ers are passe.

Microsoft obvi­ous­ly not hap­py there is a mar­ket in its road to world dom­i­na­tion it has yet to get its sticky fin­gers on has cre­at­ed what they call an ‘Ipod killer.’ So what is the name of this late entry? It is the Zune. Now on paper this prod­uct sounds great. It has a big­ger screen than the rest of the com­pe­ti­tion, Wifi and as such you can share MP3s on the go.
It sounds all great and good until you start find­ing the Wifi will only work with oth­er Zunes.
That you can only play trans­fered MP3s three time in three days, after that the song becomes unplayable, unless you buy it from their on-line store. This includes your own col­lec­tion which you may own fair and square. Heck these includes your own cre­ations! So if you are a musi­cian, don’t put your orig­i­nal work in the Zune. What is the point of shar­ing then?

How­ev­er what I found out on my trip to both stores is that at this point in the MP3 mar­ket com­pa­nies are not just sell­ing you a dig­i­tal play­er. Oh no. You see, a music play­er is no longer just music play­er. It is much more than that. At least that is what mil­lions spent in mar­ket­ing keep on stat­ing, shout­ing and danc­ing in ad after ad: ‘Our Music play­er does­n’t only play music. It more… It’s cool. Its a media and social event all by itself. It’s an artis­tic expres­sion, a bold reflec­tion of your raw and unadul­ter­at­ed id for God’s sake! It will get you laid! What are you doing stand­ing there? GO BUY ONE NOW!

Just remem­ber before you buy any of Microsoft prod­ucts –and in fair­ness any oth­er prod­uct in the future– the Zune is a first gen­er­a­tion device. The reviews have been neg­a­tive for the most part. Not to say that even big broth­er might not have a good thing going in the future. How­ev­er right now, they don’t. If you decide to pur­chase it any­way for this Christ­mas sea­son, don’t be sur­prised if you get a lit­tle too acquaint­ed with win­dows such as this one:


Oh, one last thing. The future is in all-in-one devices. Not just on Mp3 play­ers and media play­ers and so on. Apple and its com­peti­tors are slow­ly head­ing into that direc­tion but will sure­ly take their time until con­sumers wise up.

For those who are won­der­ing what I have used when need­ing a music play­er: I bought myself a smart­phone almost two years ago. Put a 1 gig mem­o­ry card on it and since then I had a colour screen big­ger than an Ipod, a phone, a media and MP3 play­er, plus a voice recorder, pda and Inter­net brows­er all for $250. It pays to be an edu­cat­ed con­sumer, even if does not look as cool as an Ipod.

Update 18/11/2006:
Man uses Mp3 play­er to hack ATM’s in the UK! Read here.