My Music "Autograph"

Apple had a major event today to launch some of it's new line of iPods. There was so much media attention including live blogging of the event and Apple stocks was fluctuating all the time. The range of iPod/Mp3 players that Apple had come up with till date is mind blowing. The revolution that Apple was able to bring in to this market is unimaginable and the sales numbers will be hard to surpass - 220+million units sold till date since it's initial launch and iPod holds the biggest slice of portable media player market share, currently at 73.8%

The new players are loaded with so many features, it's hard for me to imagine going back to one of the players that I owned and lived with not so long time ago. Here's my compilation of devices that I have owned/used and fond memories using those devices.

In the late 70's, when I was a kid, I have seen radios in only a few places and they almost always looked the same - BIG. In the early 80s, my father bought a new black Philips radio which was very nice and sleek. That was also the time FM started broadcasting cine songs for an hour in the night. So the radio became an instant hit at home.

We used to wait for உங்கள் விருப்பம் religiously every morning and evening and for occasional cine songs from சென்னை வானொலி நிலையம். Then in mid-80s came the big leap forward in music listening when my father brought home a National Panasonic 2-in-1 that plays a single cassette and also radio with recording capabilities. Good old Philips was immediately ignored, except when we lose power for 2-3 days due to rain, which is when we buy red colored evereaday batteries to listen to radio.

National Panasonic 2-in-1 also opened avenues for some mini projects with recording. I used to listen to விவித பாரதி in the morning when they will announce the names of the movies from which they play songs during the day. Everyone at home almost developed flash memories to remember the names of the movies and when they will be played during the day. My dad used to get good quality TDK cassettes (both 60min and 90min versions) and we keep them for recording songs from radio. You have to wait for the RJ to announce all the details on the song and press the black and red recording buttons simultaneously at the appropriate time. You also need to record a 3-4 sec blanks/silence at the end of the song so there is a gap between the songs. I still remember the days when we made our own cassette album with neatly organized paper cover sleeve that displayed all the songs in the cassette. National Panasonic remained favorite player till mid-90s.


In the late 90s I got my own cassette walkman. This is when getting music was little easy. You make a list of 18-20 songs in a piece of paper and drop it at the music store along with the blank cassette (Dad's good old TDK) and within a day or two you have your collection, ready to listen. When I moved to U.S. one of the first thing that I bought was a Sony CD/Cassette/Radio boombox. By then, buying cassettes came down tremendously since digital CD was on the up. I also ended up buying a couple of CD-Walkman. In couple of years, I managed to buy/collect around 200 CDs of varying genres.

Then came the biggest revolutionary change in 2004 when I first got my iShuffle which could hold around 300 songs. All of sudden my CD rack looked silly but I still had to keep them since my car only had a CD player. When I got my iPod 30GB in 2005 and transferred all my music content to it, the use for CDs dimished almost fully. Now I have iPod dock at home and iPod connector in car and it has become my only and preferred option for music.

I know there will be something else in the next decade or so, but I think I will keep some version of an iPod for a while.

Pictures Courtesy: Web