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Possibly it's a paid for ad. But the trend is real, at least among Gen Z/Alphas. I recently modded an iPod Mini 2nd gen for my daughter and put Rockbox on it. The thing is amazing, and I am thinking about buying an iPod classic myself. The touch wheel interface is one of my favourite interfaces ever.
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First off, you're a kickass parent, that's an awesome thing to do for your daughter. How easy is it to sync with music she wants to listen to? I haven't touched Rockbox in quite a while, but I imagine it's still expecting DRM-free audio files of some sort right? Other than bandcamp I can't think of any good source for finding some beyond ripping audio streams and organizing it yourself.
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Amazon Music sells DRM-free MP3 files.
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Qobuz too!
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I’ve been thinking about doing this too! Would love to get back to maintaining a personal music collection on a dedicated mp3 player.
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So who is the client? In all of the article’s photos of celebrities, they’re wearing Apple EarPods. Is Apple trying to convince people to buy their $19 EarPods instead of their $250 AirPods?
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I agree. At the very least it's vastly overstating a real trend.

> Sales are through the roof in recent months.

OK, I'll follow the link here. It goes to an article titled "Wired Headphones Growth Is a Throwback to 2016"[1], already a far cry from "through the roof".

From that article we have this:

> After 5 years of sales declines, which culminated in a $42M drop in 2024, wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).

OK, great. So wired headphones are a little bit trendy after years of decline. And of course they have some real advantages as many people here are testifying.

But c'mon, "sales are exploding", "sales are through the roof". They're not through the roof, they did a little bounce when they hit the floor. OK, to be fair it also says "the trend really gained momentum in the second half of 2025, with sales surging 10% between July and December", so maybe it's getting some momentum, but let's not get so far ahead of ourselves.

[1] https://www.circana.com/post/wired-headphones-growth-is-a-th...

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I saw one yesterday pointing out how phone cases are passé and "unnecessary" because of replacement plans.
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