After 25 years, is it time to buy a new iPod?

This is it Low corridor By Yanko Rutgersa newsletter about the ever-evolving intersection of technology and entertainment, published specifically for Edge Subscribers once a week.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original iPod. With its monochrome display, mechanical scroll wheel, and 5GB hard drive, Apple’s flagship music player now looks like a relic of a bygone era.

However, in a surprising development, there is a growing interest in the redesign.

After standing still for five years, Google searches for “MP3 player” Tripled Since last fall. Reddit group For fans of digital audio players It now attracts 90,000 visitors a week on average. And this spring, New York Times Published a trend piece About how iPods suddenly became popular among teenagers.

“It’s great to see younger generations who didn’t (try) an iPod the first time discovering it and saying, ‘That sounds like a great idea,’” says musician and startup founder Tom Kell.

The only problem: Apple to stop Its last iPod model is due in 2022. And while there has been a flood of devices from Chinese consumer electronics makers trying to fill the gap, Keil has found that a lot of them are missing. “The user interfaces of all digital music players are very poor,” he says. “Most of them are basically just Android phones with the phone elements removed.”

That’s why Kiel and a small group of collaborators began working on their own MP3 player nearly two years ago. Note the sleevesas the device is called, has a very different interface than many previous devices: Instead of making you browse endless databases of artist names and song titles, it’s all about the album art, which is displayed on a 4-inch square screen.

“We’re pros at full albums,” says Kell. “We want you to focus on one album at a time.”

Each album is presented with a complete layout, which you can browse just as you would explore a CD booklet or record sleeve. There are also no playlists, no algorithms, and no endless shuffling. You play the album from beginning to end, then choose the next one. “It’s something between vinyl and an iPod,” Keil says.

Sleevenote is compatible with music from all DRM-free download stores, including Bandcamp, Beatport, and Amazon Music. The music is transferred to the device wirelessly, and Sleevenote is creating its own database of licensed album art to accompany those tracks.

The Sleevenote team is still at the beginning of its journey. After launching a small pre-order campaign, the startup currently has 100 “day one” devices manufactured in China, with Keil telling me a limited number of units will be available for sale in June. The plan is to improve the hardware and software with a small group of early adopters, and then expand from there.

It’s an ambitious plan, and things could go very wrong — especially at a time when major consumer electronics companies are struggling to get their hands on it Basic components. However, Sleevenote hopes to meet the needs of the millions of people who buy digital music on Bandcamp and similar platforms. Bandcamp alone now sells 15 million digital albums annually, with total payments to artists exceeding $1.7 billion to date, according to Company information.

“There’s a backlash that’s brewing,” Keil says. The Sleevenote team initially considered adding Spotify support to its devices as well, but ultimately decided against it. “It won’t be a streaming device, it’ll be for owned music,” he says. “What we need is for music tech companies to have some integrity and stand up for artists.”

Meanwhile, Sleevenote wants to make buying digital music fun by making albums feel special. “It’s a carrot, not a stick,” Keil says.

It’s not just music streaming services like Spotify that face criticism over royalty rates. Some music fans also object to their reliance on algorithms to deliver endless streams that require little or no interaction with individual musical acts, while others criticize Spotify’s increasingly aggressive marketing of podcasts. “It’s almost crazy that you’re paying for it (given) the amount of advertising that’s being advertised, and you’re being pulled away to other places,” Keel says.

Millions of consumers certainly seem content to pay for music streaming services. Spotify alone now has nearly 300 million paid subscribers. However, there is also growing subscription fatigue, driven in part by ongoing price increases for streaming audio and video services. Spotify raised its prices For the third time in as many years in January.

“The more gadgets built into smartphones, the worse it becomes for consumers.” books Moderator of the aforementioned digital audio player Subreddit recently. “Suddenly everything was subscription, and nothing was proprietary.”

There’s another reason why some audiophiles crave iPod-like devices that has nothing to do with price points and business models. With smartphones taking over so much of our lives, devices that are good at one thing but don’t distract us with endless feeds and notifications are suddenly seen as a breath of fresh air. It’s the same reason people are rediscovering and embracing digital cameras Phones minimum And e-book readers.

The concept of such single-purpose devices is something Kiel can get behind. “It’s a Kindle for music,” he says of Sleevenote. “It’s 10,000 albums, but it’s also just one album at a time.”