By Teresa A. Martin
Quick Quiz! It’s a cultural icon. It’s the size of a deck of cards and always shrinking. And it turned an industry on its head.
That’s right, it’s Apple’s iPod and it’s a whopping five years old this week.
It’s one of those devices that no one quite expected, that created a buzz in a way no one imagined, and changed the way we consume music (and video) in ways that we don’t quite understand yet.
It’s even led to a pick up line and frequent interview question: “what’s on your iPod?”
Just in case you’ve been living in a cave and just now poked out your head, the iPod is Apple’s portable digital music player. It comes in several flavors, all trendy, all must-have devices.
I was talking to someone the other night who was telling me about walking by a high school auditorium recently. He heard some classic Beatles tunes cranking loud. He couldn’t resist, of course, and opened the door and looked in. All the sound was coming from a tiny tiny iPod nestled in a speaker dock at the side of the stage. Blew his visual image of music right out of the water!
Because of the iPod our music libraries are portable. They are playlistable. We think of music as data we reshape for our lives and our moods. We buy it online and download it to the iPod for instant gratification. Some of us (uhm like me!) now listen to music we hadn’t listened to in years because suddenly it’s so darn accessible again.
This little device opened up the door to new sounds, new music. With both a distribution channel (online) and a portable playback device (the iPod) that have minimal access barriers, indies had a new way to distribute. And you and I could suddenly produce and publish audio content in whole new way.
The iPod is a testament to the power of brand, too. It isn’t a generic music player. Just ask any 14-year old (or parent of said 14 year old) who tried to get by with some unknown any generic device. There is no substitute.
It’s image. It’s culture. It’s trend.
But it is always a very real statement about the merging of our media, the way we buy it, and the way we consume it.
It has also turned around a company. Apple is not some oddball maker of computers anymore. Instead, it is the hot consumer electronics company. The tiny iPod has driven sales of core Mac computers, Mac laptops, and positioned the company so well that all it takes is a rumor of an iPod cell phone to leak and it generates zillions of electrons of speculation and intense interest.
Pretty good for a simple application like playing pre-recorded music.
Happy Fifth Birthday iPod, and many many more!
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