Without sounding like a disgruntled 90-year-old, what happened to the good old days? I remember a blissful period of my life when my not-so-portable Discman player finally packed it in, and the emergence of MP3 players took hold. I spent hours “ripping” all of my tunes from my extremely cool 90s music catalog onto my new Sony Ericsson Walkman. When that also bit the dust, I transferred all of my files over to the utterly impressive iPod Mini, then a new and improved 4GB iPod Classic, and eventually to my first smartphone.
My one comfort in a time of ever-changing formats was that I could always take my headphones with me, safe in the knowledge that I’d get the most out of them with any new player. There was a brief period in time when portable music players, mobile phones, and headphones all co-existed in beautiful cross-compatible harmony.