If I wanted an MP3 player again, in 2023, and wanted to rip cds to it and put digitally purchased albums on it, as actual owned files (not inside an proprietary ecosystem where I pay to only listen to that track within that service) could I still do that? What would I need? I don’t own, and can’t afford, a “real computer”, but i recall having lots of compatibility issues at the time between my mp3 player and computer os anyway. I’ve got an ipad and a pixel. Is there any feasible, non-ridiculously-difficult way to do this? Do they still sell any mp3 players? Do any of the old ones work with modern tech? I miss hearing my music on a simple, quiet, offline device without ads or streaming services.
Looks like they stopped dev in '21, but RockBox is what I used to use. Amazing software.
Rockbox was awesome. I used it on many iPods. I remember one of my irc friends was the one of the main devs of the clock app that shipped with it.
Development hasn’t stopped, it’s just that they haven’t made new releases. I would suggest you install one of the dev builds instead.
I actually use it again, I accidentally bought a phone without a headphone jack, so I resurrected my Sansa Clip+ and updated (it already had a many years old version on it from back in the day) it to a current one :)