By Aaron Vasquez
The iPod is dead.
Like the compact disc and the Walkman, technology killed it. Once ubiquitous, iPods dominated the MP3-player market in the mid-00s.
After a peak of 22 million sales in 2009, Apple sold 6 million iPods in the last quarter of 2013, a drop of about 50 percent compared to sales figures at the same time the year before, according to the company’s earnings report.
New devices and a shift in how music is consumed accelerated the decline.
“My iPhone is my iPod, I use it for everything,” Santa Ana College student Roosevelt Monk said.
Over the 2013 holiday period, Apple sold 26 million iPads and 51 million units of the iPhone.
“It streams music for free, makes phone calls and it’s really convenient,” SAC student Joan Han said.
The rise of music streaming apps, including Pandora, iHeartRadio and Spotify, that can be downloaded into smart phones and tablets rendered storage capacity moot. In its heyday, iPods boasted up to 120 gigabytes of memory, allowing users to virtually carry around entire record collections in their back pockets.
For the first time since iTunes opened, downloads declined by 5.7 percent in 2013, album sales alone dropped by 8.4 percent, and CDs by 14.7 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Though streaming apps offer premium services, millions opt for the free version.
Listeners have instead tuned in to streaming services, and even YouTube. In 2013, songs were streamed 118.1 billion times, a 32 percent increase year to year.
“I actually pay for Spotify, and I really like it. I just want to play any song at any time,” SAC student Anthony Fernandez said.
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