Just a few years ago, the iPod was officially pronounced dead. “The spirit of iPod lives on,” eulogised Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Marketing. “We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products.” It was the moment the iPhone officially buried its parent device, having deposed it over a decade prior with its all-singing, all-dancing capabilities – doing everything its predecessor could do, and so much more. But just as we thought single-use MP3 players were made redundant, music fans began hailing their resurrection. 

“In the past few years, since Covid, we’ve seen way more people looking to get a new MP3 player,” Chris Laidler, office manager of Advanced MP3 Players, an Edinburgh store specialising in audio equipment, recently told The Guardian. This resurgence is, in part, aesthetics-driven: wired headphones and click wheels have a novel tactility in today’s screen-based world, meaning they’ve been picked up and popularised as part of the Y2K revival. But this reasoning barely scratches the surface for their comeback. The real value lies in their limitations. 

Modern music streaming is designed for endless background listening, trapped inside a device optimised to distract and seize your attention at every turn. But, after a decade of unrelenting progress and tech integration, people are acutely aware of their screen-based vices and looking for ways to digitally detox. One 2025 survey of 2,000 UK adults found 41 per cent believe they look at their phones “too much”, while 35 per cent are actively trying to cut down or eliminate their screentime altogether. In this context, MP3 players – or digital audio players (DAPs), as they’re more accurately known – are being leveraged as a tool for digital deceleration.

“I really dislike spending time on my phone in a non-intentional way,” says 28-year-old Jozef, who uses a Sony Walkman. “Getting a cheap DAP was a conscious move to reclaim that time, whether for listening to music undisturbed or being offline altogether.” As dedicated devices, they demand focused listening, turning music back into a mindful act, free from the constant barrage of notifications. “It’s cynical but I’m aware I’m essentially attention real estate, and the methods for gaining and maintaining your attention have become a lot more sophisticated in recent years,” he adds. “So from my perspective, relying on willpower and Airplane Mode alone is a losing battle.”

Technology expert and behavioural psychologist Bob Hutchins seconds this perspective. “Streaming services augmented availability and convenience, but taken to an extreme, they reversed into something oppressive and dehumanising – algorithmic control, phantom ownership, involuntary distraction,” he says. “The MP3 player is a retrieval process, a recovery of what the streaming platform age erased: intentional listening and bounded attention.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people are romanticising the past at a time when those shaping the future of tech are intent on selling a vision where effort becomes optional and so much of what brings us joy is outsourced to AI

In another sense, adopting a dedicated DAP is being seen as something of a rebellion. “I stopped using Spotify earlier this year as a result of Daniel Ek’s investments in AI war technology,” says Emma, 25, a long-term iPod user and music journalist. “The way they pay artists is incredibly poor and has made it even harder to make a sustainable living as a musician. [Using an iPod is a] conscious choice to support artists I really care about in a way that’s cheaper than vinyl and also portable.”

Streaming has failed to provide a sense of personal agency or ownership. Many young music fans are looking to grow a real, tangible archive. In this way, building a digital music library is an act of identity creation. “Curating a library takes time and effort; it requires intention,” says Hutchins. “But it also means you own something tangible. That means something to a generation that grew up seeing their entire cultural environment be at the mercy of platform decisions.”

Hunting down tracks and manually curating. That effort is the new social currency. It proves you’re a true fan with values, not just a passive consumer. People don’t want to simply lease their culture from tech giants that are increasingly seen as unethical, they want to own and curate it themselves – it’s a way of forming stronger connections to the music you love. “I was getting quite fed up of getting lost in remembering and knowing what I was listening to,” says Willem, 25, a “weird” phone collector, iPod user and technologist. “Discovery features are just so busy and noisy. It doesn’t even matter if it’s good music that I found through that functionality, it’s just gonna get lost.”

The return to DAPs doesn’t have to mean dusting off your old 1GB Sony Walkman (basically a memory stick with bells and whistles). A cottage industry has sprung up, with online stores like PlayerMods souping up iPod classics with modern batteries, USB-C charging and up to 2TB of storage. At the same time, audiophile brands like FiiO and Activo are producing high-end, single-purpose DAPs that provide superior sound quality and a novel listening experience. In all of these cases, the medium serves the music – not the other way around.

This revival isn’t happening in a vacuum; it’s one part of a much larger generational pushback. “The use of MP3s is just one example of the way that Gen Zers are experimenting with tangible media, from digital cameras to film,” says Lottie Hanwell, a cultural insights researcher. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people are romanticising the past at a time when those shaping the future of tech are intent on selling a vision where effort becomes optional and so much of what brings us joy is outsourced to AI.”

So, rather than a retro gimmick, the resurgence of single-use DAPs can be seen as a generational search for agency and connection. “Using an iPod really feels like a step forward,” says Willem. “Even though it‘s an older technology, they’re tools through which we can feel more grounded and find more community.” So, for young music fans raised with smartphones and seamless tech at their fingertips, choosing a single-purpose device isn’t just nostalgia. It’s media literacy.