Digital Media

The introduction of the MP3 format revolutionized the commercial audio industry. It enabled consumers to download individual tracks without purchasing an entire album and changed how they listened to music. Consumers could only access these songs on a personal computer for most of the 1990s, until new devices to support this audio format were created. Similar to previous audio technology, MP3 players were initially flawed and inaccessible, due to their limited storage capacity, buky size, and steep purchase price. The turning point came in 2001 when Apple released the first iPod, which was the first easily portable device to support the MP3 format. 

iPod, 5th Generation (2006) & iPhone 4s (2011). 

While iPods dominated the market for the next 10 years, a handful of MP3 players from competing companies were also successful, including the SanDisk Sansa and the Microsoft Zune. Eventually a standalone music player became less necessary for music lovers as technology progressed and smartphones served the same purpose. Music streaming platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music, made it easy for consumers to access their music from multiple devices, including smartphones, making MP3 players less convenient. Apple officially stopped production of iPods in 2017.