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This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original iPod. With its monochrome display, mechanical scroll wheel, and 5 GB hard drive, Apple’s pioneering music player now looks like the relic of a bygone era.
And yet, in a surprising twist, there’s growing interest in a redo.
After being essentially flat for five years, Google searches for “MP3 Player” tripled since last fall. A Reddit group for fans of digital audio players is now attracting 90,000 visitors per week on average. And this spring, The New York Times published a trend piece on how iPods are suddenly in fashion with teenagers.
“It’s great to see younger generations who [didn’t] experience the iPod the first time around finding out about it and being like: That sounds like a great idea,” says musician and startup founder Tom Kell.
The only problem: Apple discontinued its last iPod model in 2022. And while there has been a flood of devices from Chinese consumer electronics makers trying to fill the gap, Kell has found a lot of them lacking. “The user interfaces of all of these digital music players are shockingly bad,” he says. “Most are essentially just Android phones with the phone stuff removed.”
That’s why Kell and a small group of collaborators began working on their own MP3 player close to two years ago. Sleevenote, as the device is called, has a very different interface than many of its predecessors: Instead of making you browse endless databases of artist names and song titles, it’s all about album art, which is being presented on a square 4-inch screen.
“We’re pro whole albums,” Kell says. “We want you to focus on one album at a time.”
Each album is being shown with full liner art, which you can browse just like you would have explored a CD booklet, or a record sleeve. There’s also no playlists, no algorithms, no endless shuffle. You play an album from beginning to end, then pick the next one. “It’s something in between a vinyl and an iPod,” Kell says.
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