The rise, fall, and rise of portable MP3 players — SkimNews
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- Apple launched the iPod in November 2001, and by 2007 it held over 70% of the personal media player market while roughly 20% of Americans owned one.
- The portable media player industry peaked at $21.6 billion in 2008 before collapsing to $613 million by 2012, as iPhone sales eclipsed iPod sales in 2011 and streaming replaced digital downloads.
- Apple retired the iPod Classic in 2014, cut the Nano and Shuffle in 2017, and fully discontinued the iPod lineup in 2022.
- Current high-end players from Sony and Astell & Kern can sell for over $3,000, with Sony's NW-A306 at $399.99 the most affordable option; many run Android with full Google Play store access.
- Vintage iPods now fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay, fueling a cottage modding industry that adds Bluetooth, USB-C, and replaces failing hard drives and batteries — and modders are now doing the same with Zunes.
- Google searches for "MP3 player" have nearly tripled since last year, and Sleevenote — a startup from musician Tom Vek — is attempting a fresh approach with album-art grids and Wi-Fi syncing, though its Day One edition has disappointing battery life and is currently sold out.
- Kane Kramer patented a digital audio player in the UK in 1985 and the US in 1987, with Paul McCartney as an early backer, but the patents lapsed in 1988; Apple later credited him primarily as a legal maneuver against Burst.com.
Why it matters: The $21 billion-to-$613 million collapse between 2008 and 2012 is one of tech's sharpest category deaths, and the current niche revival — vintage iPods commanding hundreds of dollars, 'MP3 player' searches tripling, and startups like Sleevenote emerging — shows anti-streaming and slowtech sentiment is creating a small but real counter-market, though the source notes nothing currently approaches iPod-era scale.
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