Remember the iPod? It’s making a quiet comeback.
Four years after Apple killed off its digital music player, secondhand sales are surging. It’s fueled in part by young people interested not just in its retro looks but a desire to listen to music in a focused way and with playlists not determined by algorithms.
“There’s a growing trend, particularly amongst younger users, to mitigate the ease with which they can be distracted by smartphones, often driven by mental health and well-being concerns,” said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. “Having a dedicated music device, such as an iPod, is a good way to reduce your dependence on a smartphone and avoid being drawn into other activities, like doomscrolling through social media feeds, when you only really want to listen to music.”
If you’re interested in joining the iPod revival, here are some pointers:
How to get an iPod
You can’t buy a new iPod anymore but it’s not too hard to get your hands on a used one. There are still a lot of them around because Apple sold 450 million over two decades.
There’s a thriving secondhand market, as evidenced by thousands of listings for used iPods on eBay. “Based on my discussions with people in the market, there has definitely been renewed interest in refurbished iPods,” said Wood.
But watch out, because eBay, strangely, also has thousands of listings for new iPods. On closer inspection, they’re from China-based sellers and some buyers have left feedback complaining they received a used or refurbished device in counterfeit packaging.
Facebook Marketplace, peer-to-peer reselling site Mercari and refurbished electronics platform Back Market also have plenty of listings. Back Market, which operates in the U.S., Japan and more than a dozen European countries, said iPod sales last year jumped 48% from 2024.
There are also businesses dedicated to selling refurbished iPods.
And there’s a chance someone you know has one gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. My 16-year-old daughter recently discovered her grandmother’s silver iPod Nano, complete with original charging cable and white earphones, in a guest room nightstand during a recent visit.
For support, there’s a vibrant online community of users swapping tips and sharing pictures of their devices, many with aftermarket modifications like faceplates in non-original colors.
Which iPod is it?
There’s not just one single style of iPod.
The original iPod, released in 2001, came with a scroll wheel that became a design signature. When the sixth generation was released, Apple started calling it the Classic.
It was followed by the smaller Mini and Nano versions, and the Shuffle, which had no screen. Then came the Touch, which had a glass touch screen and ran on iOS to support mobile apps — basically an iPhone without the phone.
If you’re not sure which model you have, check Apple’s identification page.
Bringing it back to life
So you’ve found grandma’s old iPod, but does it work? The battery could be dead so you will need a charging cable.
Later generations of the iPod Touch used Apple’s Lightning cable but all other models require a 30-pin charging cable, which has a distinctive wide, flat plug. Apple doesn’t make these anymore but replacements are available from aftermarket manufacturers.
If charging doesn’t revive it, the battery might need replacing. Or maybe there’s something else wrong, like a broken earphone jack or a damaged display. Apple still repairs iPods, but only for the two final generations of the Touch.
You can send it to a repair service or fix it yourself if you’re feeling handy. Repair website iFixit has detailed step-by-step repair guides for replacing various components. You’ll need to source spare parts yourself.
IPod Touch owners should beware of software limitations. The most recent version of Apple’s operating system that will work on the seventh generation iPod Touch — the last version ever sold — is iOS 15, and previous models are limited to even older versions.
This is not an issue with other iPod variants because they don’t run iOS.
Adding music
Grandma’s silver iPod Nano appeared to be working fine, but I decided to start fresh by doing a factory reset to wipe the audio files left on it and restore the original settings. You’ll need a computer, either a Mac or Windows, to do this. Apple has a page that outlines the steps.
Those of you with Windows computers can use Apple’s iTunes program to manage your iPod and sync up your song library. To add digital music files from your computer, drag the files into iTunes and drop them in the iPod’s music library. To add a song that you’ve bought previously in iTunes, download it first to your computer, right click on it and select “Add to Device.”
Apple discontinued iTunes for MacOS in 2019 so Mac computer users will have to use Apple Music, but it’s an equally easy process of dragging and dropping files.
Take note, Apple Music subscribers: you should be able to stream music on later generations of the iPod Touch. But for every other type of iPod, you’ll only be able to add and listen to music files ripped from a CD or purchased from a digital music platform.
Upgrading the software
Most iPods are pretty basic, in part because they’re limited by the device’s onboard firmware.
But part of the iPod’s appeal is that it’s easy for hobbyists to tinker with them, said Wood.
“There is definitely a movement of people looking to take iPods and modify them for modern use,” he said.
One popular hack is replacing the iPod’s firmware with open-source software such as RockBox, which can be used “to upgrade an iPod to offer greater control and add features that Apple had not included or did not exist at the time,” Wood said.
This includes support for high-resolution lossless music files, the ability to manage music without iTunes, and tracking what you’ve been listening to so you can upload your playlist to a platform such as Last.fm, Wood said.
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—Kelvin Chan, AP business writer