Is anyone out there still using their iPhone as an MP3 player?
Years ago, in the late 00s I had a Samsung phone (think it was maybe one of the ones in a Bond movie?) as well as a hard-drive based MP3 player, a product called iRiver.
Then the iPhone came along with iTunes. I was reluctant at first, I wasn’t impressed with the iPhone sound or using iTunes instead of simple Windows Explorer to create a folder structure.
Eventually a few iPhone iterations down the line I swapped two devices for one.
Copied over my MP3s from my iRiver to iTunes around 2009.
I still have iTunes with all those acquired MP3s and indeed it’s my primary source for listening as opposed to streaming services like Spotify.
So, does anyone else use locally stored MP3s as their primary library and listening source or am I an MP3 version of a 70s vinyl hoarder?
Absolutely. Well - AAC rather than MP3 - but I'm pretty sure that still makes my answer a valid "yes" to your question. My very first MP3 player actually pre-dates yours by quite a way. I had (still have in my cupboard actually) a PJB-100 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Jukebox) that originally had a 5GB hard drive in it that I bought pretty much as soon as it was released in late 1999. I later upgraded the hard drive myself to 20GB. In the early days you had to be careful to walk quite softly when out and about with it because even a slightly heavy step could cause the hard drive to skip although later firmware versions pretty much eliminated that issue - presumably by increasing the music buffer size in RAM (it was a long time ago, I can't really remember the details now)
Back to the present day, I do stream quite a lot when listing at home on my main audio system but even there I mostly listen to local downloads with streaming limited to checking out new releases or stuff I hadn't heard before (often recommended automatically by my streaming service). If a recommendation turns out to be something I really like then I buy a high res audio download. After purchase I put the high res version on my main music server in FLAC format (that's what I used when I first ripped all my CDs so I stick with it for consistency) and I immediately also create a 320kbs AAC version that I put into my iTunes library so that it syncs to my iPhone. I use the standard Apple Music player to listen to the local files on my phone.
I manage my music like this for multiple reasons...
1 - I like to support artists that I like. If an artist creates an album that I really like (even if I don't like every single track) then they deserve more than the pitiful streaming royalties they would get from me so I like to buy the whole album. Most of the stuff I listen to isn't from the megastars who might get their tracks streamed hundreds of millions of times so for less well known artists I think that buying whole-album downloads can make a meaningful difference, or at least I hope so.
2 - When I'm out walking or travelling I like to conserve battery life on my phone and local playback is more efficient that streaming using mobile data - or even streaming over WiFi for that matter. Also, I'd hate it if I ended up in a dead spot reception-wise and suddenly lost access to music - on a long plane flight that's pretty much guaranteed unless someone wants to spend silly money on probably not very good internet connectivity while in flight.
3 - I have a relatively small monthly data cap (3GB) on my mobile plan which is way more than adequate for what I currently use it for but probably wouldn't last me a whole month if I streamed all of my music. Since I am really happy with my current strategy I just don't see any point in spending more each month to upgrade my data cap just for streaming.
The only slight clunky bit of my strategy is for albums that I haven't quite made my mind up about so I haven't bought them yet but are still on my active listening-to list. For those I also have the app for my streaming service (Qobuz) installed on my phone and I explicitly do a Qobuz download of any albums still on my probation list that I think I might want to listen to when I'm out. As I said that is a bit clunky since I have to decide which albums to download before I go out, and it means switching between the Apple Music and Qobuz app sometimes, but that's a manageable irritation for me since usually most of what I listen to while out and about is from my main library.
This setup has worked well for me for decades, although in the earliest days (iPhone 4 was my first iPhone) I did have to use much lower bitrates for my AAC files in order to fit a decent amount of stuff onto my phone. Now even at 320kbs I can fit my entire ripped-CD/purchased-downloads collection onto my phone.