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Bonus pic: This is what the inside of my heavily-modified iPod looks like. It handles music way better than my phone.
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Didn’t realise I could make such a decent thread with none of the usual hate that this forum can sometimes attract.

Great to hear the different ways that people are utilising non-streaming methods of listening to music.

A genuine thanks to everyone for their input to this thread.
It has been a refreshing read!
 
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Despite loving my iPad, and it being perhaps my most-used computing device around the house, my phone is a mid-level Android because I really like being able to turn it into my dream iPod -- headphone jack, hundreds of gigs via SD card for my collection of FLAC and mp3 files. And the home screen customized to where you'd think it was a dedicated music device. Can't even tackle the gigs on iPhone without spending money I'd way rather allocate to music.
 
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I use the first iPhone I ever got, the iPhone 5S, as an iPod because the camera and flash died and the internet connectivity sometimes bugs out. It feels soooo comfortable in the hand (after like 5 years of big-screen iPhones!), doesn't take up your entire pocket (so I can fit my bluetooth earbuds' case too) and is a trip down memory lane. Even a mid-2011 MacBook Air 13' I used to have felt just as nostalgic to use as the iPhone 5S does today.

Right now I use an iPhone 12 Pro, with the same music library downloaded to it, but the experience doesn't even compare to what the 5S achieves with me.
 
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Happy that Im not alone! Now we just need Roon ARC on Apple Watch so i can run and stream on my Watch;)

Lifetime member also?
Lifitime as well, since a long time (still the old price, back in 2019 if I am not mistaken), straight after the trial period.
Roon ARC has been a nice add-on, so I do no have to use my vpn running on a Raspberry Pi for this purpose anymore, the auto discovery functionality of the iPhone from Roon was a bit sketchy at times.
Never regretted the decision and I always use Roon + Qobuz, from the iPhone, for my hi-end headphone setup connected to the Mac, for the hi-fi system in the leaving room and so on.
 
Lifitime as well, since a long time (still the old price, back in 2019 if I am not mistaken), straight after the trial period.
Roon ARC has been a nice add-on, so I do no have to use my vpn running on a Raspberry Pi for this purpose anymore, the auto discovery functionality of the iPhone from Roon was a bit sketchy at times.
Never regretted the decision and I always use Roon + Qobuz, from the iPhone, for my hi-end headphone setup connected to the Mac, for the hi-fi system in the leaving room and so on.
Awesome, I got lifetime around 2018, well worth the money.

I have mostly use Roon with my Naim system and my NDX2, and have used my Chord Mojo addon to my iPhone, but its just to much fiddling. So mostly lazy AirPods way at work and ARC. When run i use AirPods with radio

Only pure vinyl rips here, i dont do any streaming(or cloud) since i decided some time ago to stop with all subscription models. I allow one time payment, but no subscription as far as possible.
 
Is anyone out there still using their iPhone as an MP3 player? I still have iTunes with all those acquired MP3s and indeed it’s my primary source for listening as opposed to streaming services like Spotify. So, does anyone else use locally stored MP3s as their primary library and listening source or am I an MP3 version of a 70s vinyl hoarder?
Yes, bc streamers don’t have the music I like to listen to. I manage my library because its full of studio sessions and outtakes and live recordings of my favorite bands that all took years to acquire or organize, and some bands I recorded decades ago. I like recordings as snapshots of the interpersonal chemistry of a band of artists in a given time, and despise the cheap commodification of music as worthless generic “content” that streamers & DJs have succeeded in pushing. I asked my neice what her favorite bands were and she couldn't name any, bc its just an endless stream of background noise to her, it has no value. Doesn't matter, when I die this grand audio library will all get tossed in a landfill with everything else.

Edit: in this post, by “streamers” I don’t mean you guys, I mean the companies that distribute music via streaming.
 
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Yes, bc streamers don’t have the music I like to listen to. I manage my library because its full of studio sessions and outtakes and live recordings of my favorite bands that all took years to acquire or organize, and some bands I recorded decades ago. I like recordings as snapshots of the interpersonal chemistry of a band of artists in a given time, and despise the cheap commodification of music as worthless generic “content” that streamers & DJs have succeeded in pushing. I asked my neice what her favorite bands were and she couldn't name any, bc its just an endless stream of background noise to her, it has no value. Doesn't matter, when I die this grand audio library will all get tossed in a landfill with everything else.

I agree with your observation on the impact of DJs and steeaming.

I see it in my own listening ever since first subsribing to Spotify. I still have my mp3 collection, which consists of artists which I really enjoy (and tend to know about to some extent about), but I have come to predominantly listen to Spotify, which has introduced me to a small number of artists which I have added to my mp3 collection, but has also given me hundreds of artists in playlists that I can't recall the name of the song or the artist when it comes on. It is 'background noise', primariy there to provide just that when I run.
 
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Yes, bc streamers don’t have the music I like to listen to. I manage my library because its full of studio sessions and outtakes and live recordings of my favorite bands that all took years to acquire or organize, and some bands I recorded decades ago. I like recordings as snapshots of the interpersonal chemistry of a band of artists in a given time, and despise the cheap commodification of music as worthless generic “content” that streamers & DJs have succeeded in pushing. I asked my neice what her favorite bands were and she couldn't name any, bc its just an endless stream of background noise to her, it has no value. Doesn't matter, when I die this grand audio library will all get tossed in a landfill with everything else.
Interesting points. I suppose the counter point is, people aren’t recording bands themselves and if they are, they are using their phones to record the event in video format. I do have physical media but predominately stream these days. I use Tidal Hifi and Apple Music via a BlueSound node in my living room and a Sonos setup in my bedroom. Streaming gives me access to pretty much most of the music ever recorded, ease of access/use, and offers suggestions of similar types music I would never discover on my own when my personal playlists end.
 
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My new (to me) 6 Plus arrived yesterday, so spent some time restoring and installing stuff. As mentioned previously it has a bad headphone jack. But I usually use BT anyway so not a problem.

What I did not expect (but probably should have) was a bad battery. It'll drop from 100 percent to 12 percent and crash the phone on anything intensive. Going to have to get the battery replaced.

In the meantime, it does just fine hooked up to a power cable sitting on my desk. Streaming my music right now.
 
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I still do this because my digital music collection is well over 1TB. I’m not going to pay for streaming services and let all the locally stored stuff I worked very hard to get collect dust.

I have a 128GB iPhone so I obviously can’t store it all on there—thus the only pain to my “old-school” method of music consumption is that I have to make playlists, and occasionally swap out what’s on my phone when I get bored and want to hear something different.
 
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I have an SE’16 with only 16GB which I use as an Apple Music, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime streamer. I like to listen to music via a Bluetooth speaker and when I am in bed I usually stream an episode of something on the above apps.
Do your eyes a favour and get an iPad Mini 2 upwards.
 
To this day I have my entire collection of nearly 1100 CDs ripped as MP3s and saved on both my Windows laptop and desktop PCs, as well as backed up on a 128GB flash drive. It's roughly 14000 songs which take up about 107GB of space.

I use iTunes to keep them synched across my iPad and iPhone, but iTunes has a very annoying bug which has never been corrected: it will almost always botch the album artwork! On roughly 10% of my collection I will get the wrong album cover but from the same artist, but in a few cases I will get the wrong album cover altogether. Deleting the artwork and re-fetching doesn't seem to work consistently.

For the amount of money I've spent on my music, it makes zero sense to rent access to 20 million songs I'll never listen to when I can buy, one time, a copy of what I will listen whenever I want to, and have it all of my life.
 
Do your eyes a favour and get an iPad Mini 2 upwards.
I already have an iPad Mini 4 & 5 along with a 6S & 8 which are both no longer being used. I just prefer using the SE because it’s so small and light, even in an Otterbox case, so when I start falling asleep, I can just prop it against the headboard and nod off.
 
Got a mint condition ipod, was thinking about doing a SSD conversion on it

In my cars I ether stream YouTube music from my phone or just use the week straight of music I have on a SD card, gotta love cars with SD readers, simple cheap and just works
 
Yes. My iPhone is my primary repository for music and podcasts, they are backed up on my Macs and my Plex server but not usually played from them. I don't want to stream when I can help it, being dependent on internet access at all times is something I try to avoid.
 
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Is anyone out there still using their iPhone as an MP3 player?

Years ago, in the late 00s I had a Samsung phone (think it was maybe one of the ones in a Bond movie?) as well as a hard-drive based MP3 player, a product called iRiver.

Then the iPhone came along with iTunes. I was reluctant at first, I wasn’t impressed with the iPhone sound or using iTunes instead of simple Windows Explorer to create a folder structure.

Eventually a few iPhone iterations down the line I swapped two devices for one.

Copied over my MP3s from my iRiver to iTunes around 2009.

I still have iTunes with all those acquired MP3s and indeed it’s my primary source for listening as opposed to streaming services like Spotify.

So, does anyone else use locally stored MP3s as their primary library and listening source or am I an MP3 version of a 70s vinyl hoarder?
I own my music. More than 10K songs. While I do have streaming, if I like something, I buy and rip a CD (lossless).
 
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