Grey.

The OP is discussing his concerns about, quote, "My big question, then, is how are we going to listen to music on a bike 2, 3, 5 years from now?" He then asked, "What are YOU all thinking?"

I offered an opinion about how I listen to music on my bike and demonstrated that there is a realm beyond MP3's which will continue to exist and likely supercede the MP3 format.

Riveting

100% of the time I commute, I listen live SiriusXM streamed via Android smartphone app, or listen to podcasts or audiobooks, and I rarely listen to music. I personally use a single wired ear bud with the phone in my pants/shorts pocket, and with the earbud wire under my jersey. And once in a great while, I'll use a Bluetooth earbud if I don't want to deal with the earbud wire, but they tend to be heavier, require more fussing with re-charging, and creates more wind noise.

Honestly, bike riding "requires" ZERO hearing, just like driving you car "requires" zero hearing. Otherwise completely deaf people (or people deaf in one ear) would not be allowed to drive or ride bikes, which is not the case. I realize hearing is "safer", but is not "required".

ItsJustMe

Try to go out and buy an MP3 player with more than about 32GB of capacity. A friend was looking for one a couple of months ago and asked me for help. I looked around too, as did several other friends.

You have ONE choice. iPod classic 160G.

Now zero. So in that market, what Apple chooses to build actually is incredibly important.

Of course, these days you can get a 128GB SD card. It's stupid expensive ($800) right now, but it'll be down to $200 soon enough, then you will be able to fairly easily put together a fairly roomy player. You just need one that takes SDXC cards and hopefully will run RockBox.

Heck, it's not even very hard to build your own MP3 player. There are a few people who have done it, and it doesn't cost much, about $50 in parts. I think most of them can only currently do SDHC but that's just a library limitation I think.

ItsJustMe

FWIW, I don't need that much space, and also on the bike I REALLY do not want headphone cords, so I just use my phone and a bluetooth headset. A 64G phone isn't crazy or that expensive (assuming you don't buy from Apple, which apparently makes iridium-plated flash chips) and that's plenty of space for my music. I don't need to carry every album I've ever bought with me every day.

fietsbob

people dont put money in the tip jar for live music anymore ..

I-Like-To-Bike

Maybe I would need 32GB or more of portable storage on the mp3 player if I was going to cycle around the earth, several times, and have no opportunity to upload any more mp3 files while traveling on this journey. As it is, I can currently load umpteen audiobooks and mp3 music files, enough to last for non stop listening for weeks on my 16GB or my 8 GB mp3 players. It isn't that hard to load/unload more from an inexpensive portable external hard drive. Just bought a 750gb Western Digital Data Elements external hard drive for $29 from Tiger Direct. You can fool yourself if you like about how important Apple products are to the functioning of the Music listening world.

I-Like-To-Bike

So why did you even post that Apple won't be selling mp3 players with more than 32GB? No one but an Apple Fan Boiy needs to carry around his entire collection of Itunes with him at all times on the latest and greatest product from Apple.

Grey.

Pono Music - Where Your Soul Rediscovers Music

Pono Music Homepage

wphamilton

64GB cards can be had for $20.

I think that my $8 MP3 player has a 32GB card, maybe 16GB since I was going cheap, but I use only a fraction of it for my play list. Apple may be influential in the high end, but they don't dominate the market.

megalowmatt

Hard drive storage is not going anywhere. The very things that store media on the "cloud" are hard drives. The benefit that some see from "cloud" storage is their media is available from any device they own and is playable from anywhere with a wifi or data signal. What you're suggesting on some level is that consumers will no longer have access to hard drives but personally I don't think that will be the case at all. What we will see is better, more efficient storage ("hard drives") in the future that will still be able to play whatever media we may have. It's already been mentioned but the mp3 format is way too popular for it to become obsolete.

That's what I'm thinking

Todzilla

What about those of us who make our own music? I don't want to go to the cloud to get mixes I'm working on.

gregjones

I asked the kid down the road about the stuff in this thread. He told me that my phone will store and play music.

Who knew??

no1mad 

Moved from Commuting.

long john

I lost everything in the cloud the last time it rained.

ItsJustMe

Because I'm pretty sure that's what OP was talking about. I didn't say *I* needed it.

ItsJustMe

I'm talking specifically about extremely high capacity players. The person I was helping would have bought a 500GB player if they had it. For her, it's not about needing 300,000 hours of continuous, non-repeating music, she specifically goes to sea for months on scientific research ships and wants to have her whole collection with her. It is probably not really applicable to the situation of a bicycle commuter.

tds101 

Hard drive devices are dying, as they are prone to crashes & such. Flash memory based players are taking over. I used to be a moderator at "anything but iPod. Com", so I have a slight idea about where the market is. I've owned/own Cowon, SanDisk, Creative, Sony, Iriver, etc players.

As for mp3's going out soon,...it ain't gonna happen. The major and minor companies might try to push for more lossless usage (such as FLAC) but mp3 isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

cobrabyte

wphamilton

All of the modern players support micro-sd cards.

loky1179

Except for the Apple products. Their engineers just can't figure out how to get one in there.

TransitBiker

I have no MP3 on my iPod, it's all AAC, and i use earpods while riding... does not affect my situational awareness.

I really hope they bring the dedicated music player back. It also seconds as a hard drive, which is pretty cool.

- Andy

njkayaker

Not "late", just clueless.

The iPod classic just played music (mp3 files).

It's been replaced by the iPod Touch and iPhones that play mp3/other files in exactly the same way but also do much more.

There's little point in Apple selling a device that can only play music files (and do nothing else).

njkayaker

This is kind of silly.

njkayaker

Just like Google (the Nexus devices don't have microSD slots either).

njkayaker

The iPhone/iPad/IPod touch work just like the classic iPod. They all work basically like your Android device. (The Google Nexus and Apple devices don't have microSD slots.)