this is an anecdotal guide on finding the right music device for you if you want to move away from streaming or using spotify etc.. last update 8.7.25 (grammar tweaks and clarity after making the initial post).

tip 1: figure out what you need and want your device to do.

what do you value out of your listening experience? portability? bluetooth? a headphone jack? audio quality? nostalgia (i totally get missing your old ipod!)? figure out what you value the most in your listening experienc eand go from there. when i first decided to try repurchasing an mp3 device i wanted to mimic the iPod experience as closely as possible without the hassle of dealing with iTunes sync. i started with a FiiO X1 as they look similar to iPods but they have a drag-and-drop file experience and expandable storage via microSD card.

if you want an mp3 to listen to the occasional file or album or two, especially if you aren't planning to ditch streaming entirely, i recommend this one. it's not bad but has a lot of hardware and software issues that made me looking for an upgrade relatively quickly.

i used the FiiO M3K with rockbox installed onto it for a bit, but finding files to add to the queue with the M3K's trackwheel became tiresome and i didn't understand how to use replaygain tags at the time so the variance in track volume became annoying (more on that later) for me so i began looking for another device.

if you want to listen to music in the car, figure out how that's possible for you and how you want to use it. my car doesn't even have a CD player so i needed something with bluetooth, so i tried only listening to music i had purchased on bandcamp. but eventually this solution got annoying because bandcamp's mobile app admittedly isn't great. when i tried an aux cord solution with my FiiO devices, it just didn't work with my car's software for whatever reason. so i've eventually ended up getting an android phone, LGV30, to use as a dedicated listening device, and that's what i've been using pretty much every day since getting it.

something else i like to do is log my music listening experience because, sue me, i thought spotify wrapped was fun, and i like seeing my stats at the end of the year. if you are interested in tracking your music stats without using spotify or apple music etc. you can make a last.fm account. i already had one, and since the LGV30 is an android phone, i was able to download a universal scrobbling app named panoscrobbler via an APK onto it. some people don't care about tracking their music stats, but i do, so ya know.

tip 2: identify how important audio quality is to you.

some people want high quality lossless audio files like FLAC. other people are fine with youtube rips. consider space size limitations of your device and if it's expandable later, and if you'll want access to higher quality files at a later time. keep in mind you will need storage on your computer to store your music collection on, and then you have to be able to move all that music over to your device too.

the file size i usually go for for my listening experience is MP3 320, but i have a few albums in FLAC and AAC. other people can explain the variation in file types better than i can, so do your own research.

tip 3: identify how you want to store your music on your computer.

i do not use iPods because i knew the iTunes stuff would annoy me, so this is tailored to people not using iTunes because idk how iTunes works in 2025. i have a music/collection path on my PC. i organize all my music with the file structure year - artist name - album ; i.e. Music/Collection/1999 - Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile.

i sort all of my music like this even if i only have one song off the album. it just makes it easier to find and organize later. i sort my collection folder by using the 'date edited' view so anything i recently added gets filtered to the top of the list to make it easier to see and move new stuff to my device without having to move over the entire folder again. honestly if i was starting this now i'd probably do artist name - album - year but i have too much music and i'm not gonna redo all that.

tip 4: how do you want to get music?

bandcamp is usually what i use to get music if an album is available there, but there's a lot that isn't, especially more popular artists who are signed to big record labels. you can rip CDs using a portable CD drive you plug into your computer via USB (btw you can get CDs from your local library instead of buying them). youtube to mp3 sites are still going strong, especially if audio quality isn't a big deal for you. otherwise, soulseek is great (especially for old vkei that isn't easily found or available most places)(or being charged for an exorbitant fee, thanks for nothing malice mizer fans). this soulseek tutorial made it extremely easy and accessible to use, this guy is awesome. don't be stupid and download suspicious looking files like exe files. if you fuck up your computer, it's your own fault.

tip 5: check your music's metadata.

when using your own device it becomes important to make sure the metadata is logged in a way you like and is tailored to you. for example, especially downloading things off of soulseek, because it is a peer-to-peer file sharing service, it's kind of inevitable that sometimes people type band names differently. for example, i have some 'trent reznor and atticus ross' albums that i initially had downloaded named as 'trent reznor & atticus ross' which is a minute difference on something like spotify but makes them come up as two different artists on most personal music software, so it's the sort of thing you want to make sure you standardize in your files (i use and instead of &).

i check all my metadata tags and stuff and if the album has album art logged appropriately using MusicBee. if you right-click an album, assuming the other metadata is logged corretly, you can usually use the 'search the internet for album cover' button for the album cover and upload it automatically that way. you can also copy and paste one yourself if you can't find it with the 'search the internet' button or you want to use a variant or something. if you download your music through bandcamp pretty much everything in terms of metadata will already be done for you; if you use youtube-mp3 it'll be a more manual and intensive process. as mentioned, soulseek is up to the person sharing the files. in my experience most people are pretty thorough, but especially with video game music, it can be important to standardize the name of the album artist as something like 'Capcom Sound Team' and not 'Capcom' 'Devil May Cry' 'Capcom Sound' etc.. musicbee makes editing your music files and album names and stuff really easy. unfortunately musicbee is not available on linux, but i have heard good things about foobar2000 as well.

on all of my new downloads, even ones from soulseek that might have these tags already generated, i use the 'send to volume analysis' button on musicbee religiously to add replaygain tags, which are a series of file tags that adjust the volume accordingly on all of your music so if you enable replaygain, all tracks sound to be at the relatively similar volume. this means less volume knob fiddling. i typically shuffle all my music so this is necessary. i never messed with my FiiO mp3 devices enough to figure out how to toggle on replaygain on them, but in the music app i use on the LGV30, powerAMP, there's a simple toggle-on button you can use to turn it on and off at will. seriously if you shuffle a lot, use track replaygain, it's annoying because albums are recorded at different master volumes, and it does quickly become noticeable if you shuffle. if you have a rockbox device, i'm sure there's a replaygain button somewhere in there, i just don't know where it is.

how do i find new music?

my taste has definitely evolved to become more genre-specific since i stopped streaming music, but tbh i don't think this is a bad thing! if i'm going to be spending money on something, i want to make sure i'm going to like it, you know? i use the 'similar artists' feature on last.fm all the time, as well as reading comments (sometimes last.fm really sucks so just be careful) people leave on albums i like or on artist pages to see other artists people recommend or listen to; for example i'm pretty sure i discovered xiu xiu from people mentioning them often on SWANS's page. i follow artists on bandcamp and see who they follow in turn. i listen to record label sampler albums on bandcamp and follow the labels if i like them. i listen to albums from top to finish on youtube and download them only after that and if i think i'll want to listen to it often.

i do so much scrolling through subreddits for music genres i like. mostly r/industrialmusic because r/goth is extremely annoying with people asking if they qualify as goth because they know 1 the cure song and wear black lipstick and demonias or people asking if they're goth because they know all of cinema strange and lowlife and lycia and xmal deutschland's discographies but they just can't go clubbing or something but i digress. r/industrialmusic is awesome r/goth is kind of mid. i like to look up 'artist name i'm interested in album recommendations reddit' or 'artist name i'm interested in where to start reddit' to see what albums real people, not the algorithm, view as 'essential' to an artist's discography. i did this when i decided to start listening to coil and it really helped identify the stuff i would like in their very varied and expansive discography instead of just letting spotify take the wheel and hitting 'like' on random songs i enjoy. i won't lie, it takes up a significantly larger amount of time than shuffling a discover weekly playlist does, but it's so much more rewarding, and music honest to god feels like a HOBBY for me again, not just something i do to take up white noise or something i can just will into existence. i have to put in some amount of work and a lot of time to find stuff i like and curate and it's so, so worth it.

i don't really believe in 'rating your music' so to speak because something we all hate can become beloved (looking at something like lou reed's metal machine music) so i avoid rateyourmusic but, hey, other people might get value out of it. discogs is great for physical media if you think you might want to go primarily a CD-vinyl-tape direction with your hobby.

i don't want to read all that, what do you recommend?: i use a LGV30 phone with powerAMP, which i installed via APK and not through the play store. it is simless. i only have powerAMP and panoscrobbler on it and i only have it connected to my home wifi so the last.fm scrobbles that get logged with panoscrobbler will get logged correctly on my last.fm account. the LGV30 has the benefit of being an android phone, being extremely cheap on ebay, having an extremely reputable DAC that outperforms more expensive listening devices, having a microSD slot for expandable storage, USB-C, and having bluetooth so i can hook it up to my car. the biggest drawback is that it's pretty big, even bigger than my iphone, and if i don't want to bring a bag, dedicating two pants pockets to phones kind of sucks.

i have used 3 different dedicated listening devices: FiiO X1, FiiO M3K, and the LGV30, and the LG was the cheapest one (i got one with some minor burn-in on ebay for about $20. i have turned all the screen settings down so the screen turns off after like 5 seconds of inactivity and since i only unlock it to look for something to add to my queue or something, i don't really mind the burn in). powerAMP costs an additional 10 dollars but you can buy the APK from the developer without going through the google store. i think it's the best choice for people with similar music 'needs' to me; i just wish the phone was smaller.