iPod memories: How a handheld device changed my relationship with music

The writer's old iPod. On May 10, 2022, Apple Inc. said it was discontinuing all models of the iPod - five months shy of the iPod's 21st birthday.

iPod, Apple’s portable music player that transformed the way the music industry worked, has been discontinued. Writers far greater than me will tell you just how a single device impacted the way we consumed music but as a proud owner of the iPod Classic, I can say my relationship with music was never the same after I lay my hands on that shiny device all those years ago.

As an '80s kid being raised in a family with no ear for music, all we had was a radio set that would crackle to life at 6am with my grandfather. He went about his chores to M.S. Subbulakshmi’s Suprabhatam even though he didn’t understand a word of it.

For the rest of the day, some ancient Hindi and Marathi film music I couldn’t care less about would drone on from the set. For someone who was drawn by the music in my neighbour’s house – from Queen to Whitney Houston, The Police to Michael Jackson – this was just white noise. Yet, for some reason, I never had the courage to invite myself to my neighbour’s house just to listen.

And so, for a greater part of the first 20 years of my life, my relationship with music was not dissimilar to my relationship with girls: I only admired them from afar.

It was only after Class 10 that we landed ourselves a cassette player, the tiny portable kinds that was no match for my neighbour’s Bose, but at least I had something on which I could play the music I wanted.

The cassette player made way for the Walkman, which itself made way for the Discman that wasn’t as portable as it was advertised because should it shake even a bit you’d skip to the next track

To be sure, growing up in a distant suburb meant that there was only that much music you could get exposed to. So even as the hardware kept getting updated – don’t we all remember the time when we discovered that “anti-skip” Discman – we were only just listening to music that our friends did. If you had friends with questionable taste in music, as I did, you were doomed to listen to Muqabla and Urvashi for an entire year.

Admittedly, it would be until I met the girl I’d eventually marry that my relationship with music was restored. Her taste in music was what I aspired to and soon I was receiving dozens of mix CDs as part of my ongoing musical education.

Unsurprisingly, when I could finally afford an iPod Classic – for a princely sum of ₹20,000 saved up from my salary of several months – it was as a gift to her. Before long, I ended up with one of my own. And while, yet again, I was fortunate to have access to the latest hardware, the iPod was different. It gave me access to a world of music I’d never dreamed of.

iTunes did a lot more than just introduce me to new music; it was a portal to another world. From EDM to Hip Hop and Jazz and Pop, I was listening to music indiscriminately. The iPod also made it easier to share music. Earlier you’d be apprehensive of sharing your CD with someone you didn’t entirely trust. Now, you could just borrow their iPod, download music off of it and give them your music in exchange.

You didn’t need to carry a bunch of cassettes or CDs (guilty!) in your backpack all the time, all you needed to do to listen to a different track, album or genre was to tap on that wheel and turn it around to that reassuring sound of a hundred clicks.

Eventually, I ended up owning several iPod models, but none of them served me as loyally and for as long as the iPod Classic with its massive 160 GB memory. As was wont, the iPod made way for the iPhone and the trusty Classic was relegated to the old electronics drawer.

Until some years ago, when I plugged an old iPhone charger into it and the machine woke up once again, its blue-white screen showing all the music that I’d left behind in my relentless search for the new.

Instinctively, I knew what track I wanted to play. From the nearly 120 GB of music, only one seemed fitting.

Cue: If there is something by Roxy Music

“Shake your hair girl with your ponytail

Takes me right back (when you were young)”