History of music player

Most of people are now so accustomed to listening to music on their Mp3 players that they cannot of think about another way of doing this. The portable music has advanced through the years together with the change of pace in our lives.

The industry of music players witnessed its first revolution when Sony launched its walkman, in 1979 a product that gained tremendous popularity among the young. The concept created a whole new lifestyle where you could always listen to music no matter what you are doing; whether cooking, cycling or just lying in the park. The headsets then were much heavier than what we are used to today. The player used magnetic cassette tape for recording and playing music. The source of energy was two AA batteries and the sound quality was good but batteries wore out fast.

New concepts had been absolute to emerge on the whole concept of portability and so the compact disk walkman was the next to enter the market in 1984. The sound quality was definitely better than the cassette tape but it was so bulky even by the standards of that time that it normally required a back pack to carry it. When the compact disk played it used to skip certain parts of the song as it was manufactured with the laser technology which was mechanical. This problem was later solved but the major flaw was the limitation of storage capacity since a CD at that time could store up to a maximum of 20 songs only.

Get into the Mp3 audio format in 1991 which was a sound compressing technique based on a human hearing limitation known as auditory masking. This increased the storage capacity to 10 times that of a traditional CD. This created new avenues of growth and development for the modern digital technology in the form of flash storage. This was a huge success but took time to be accessible to everybody due to its high price and also the fact that lesser priced mp3 based CDs and MDs were available but with the prices of flash storage coming down these CDs took a back seat. Portable Mp3 players started coming into the market with top storage at 512 MB only.

The industry of music players witnessed its most impressive gadget when Apple introduced its iPod that changed everything forever with never before heard capacity of 5GB in a portable gadget. This as everyone knows is definitely getting improved up with the latest model having a capacity of 160 GB.

Comparing digital music players

In any area of business, you have two types of entities or products competing against one another, the "major brand" and the "minor brand". The major brand is that brand that is more quickly recognized while the minor brand is one with a name just because it has to have one OR the major brand may be the product in that area of commerce at the time. This is the case with digital music players today as there are many "MP3 players" on the market right now and there is also the iPod. Consider a few areas of comparison.

Your first consideration is of the fact that you can buy a digital music player from, say, apple for around $250 while iPod produces the same 60GB player for around $400. People constantly see other people discussing the function and advancement of the iPod, comparing it to all others you believe that it is an obvious way to go, but when it comes to the hard drive, space is most important. In this case, it is as easy as saving $250!

The next consideration, if you are the type of person that gets frustrated easily with head games being played by major corporate types is that iPod requires you to use their format to play on their player. Instead of regular MP3 files that most everyone else uses, iPod requires use of their file so if you get frustrated by worthless problems; you might consider a "minor brand" MP3 player.

When it is all said and done, when you are buying a digital music player the argument is the same as just about everything else you purchase for a large amount of money, do you want to be cool or level headed? If you want to be cool and carry your newest gadget on your arm to show off to all of those around you then you need to go with the iPod and not worry about the money. If you want to save money and enjoy a lot of hard drive space to store songs in without regard to what people think of your taste then go with the "minor brand". But whatever you do, make the decisions yourself. You will be overwhelmed if you listen to every salesman you know. Choose wisely. Don't be afraid to shop around for a bargain. This is a major purchase. Don't be forced into anything. Salesmen will push you into something you may not want.

As with any major decision, you need to take your time and choose the player that you will enjoy for years to come. Test them out when you shop around. MP3's and IPods are a huge market. There are dozens of brands and styles to choose from. Also, keep an eye on the Sunday newspaper for sales listings for MP3's and IPods. Sometimes your choice of the retailer you visit can be confusing. One of the best ways to shop around is to make phone calls to the different retailers and inquire about features and prices of different MP3's and IPods.