Second-hand iPods
The iPod is back, writes Ludovic Hunter-Tilney:
Like the control dial on an iPod Classic, making satisfyingly clicky sounds as you scroll songs, what goes around comes around. Apple’s pioneering series of MP3 players, launched in 2001 and shuttered in 2022, is making a comeback. Searches for versions of the iPod Classic on eBay rose by a quarter during the first 10 months of 2025, while those for its diminutive younger sibling, the iPod Nano, were up by a fifth.
Those hunting for second-hand iPods in digital bazaars aren’t original owners like me. Instead, it’s Gen Z. Reasons include nostalgia for the Y2K era of their upbringing and the iPod’s alluring retrofuturist design, especially the chunky Classic, supposedly inspired by a 1950s Braun radio. But the main motive appears to be a backlash against the manipulative device that put paid to the iPod.
That device, of course, was the smartphone. Hunter-Tilney says this trend is about Gen Z eschewing the "dragnet" of more modern devices. I think it's something a little more straightforward: an aesthetic. The two ideas are related, though -- the aesthetic is simplicity, focus, calm. And I like it. Problem is...
MP3 players need downloaded songs. Last year, downloaded albums fell by almost 16 per cent in the US. That doesn’t tally with a switch away from streaming music on smartphones. But — and here I cast no aspersion on the new set of vintage iPod owners, who I have no doubt are fine upstanding citizens — a rise in music piracy does.
Of course, for the full Y2K experience, today's kids should be forced to wait 20 minutes to download a song they want, only to discover the file is something else entirely. Happy days.
Update: Tony Fadell, the former Apple executive who helped create the original iPod, has offered his view on why it's back in fashion: