MP3 Players Overview
I still remember when the early MP3 players came out. My friend in London who had one proudly showed off his acquisition and people looked at him strangely when he was ‘plugged in’ on the underground.
Today, it is scarcely possible to imagine life without these devices and they come in multiple formats and shapes, ranging from Apple Ipods to Flash based players and CD based players. An MP3 player is actually a misnomer since these devices don’t just play MP3s, but any type of audio file in digital format, which is why they are often called DAPs, or Digital Audio Players.
As mentioned, there are various versions of MP3 Players, for example:
Ipod - this is arguably the most popular MP3 player on the market today, although the biggest complaint against the Ipod is that the only way to get new music is to buy it from the Apple store
Flash based MP3 players - These MP3 players stores the music on a memory card or flash based memory
Hard disk based - these can store many more songs!
CD based
The other use that can be made of MP3s are for cellphone ringtones, and this use has basically exploded. The controversy around using MP3s for ringtones are almost the same as for MP3 players and revolve around the fact that it is easy to obtain music that are converted into MP3 illegally and then copied to these devices.
But this is basically a case of killing the messenger, since the MP3 player or cellphone would be merely the device on which the music is played, and it is quite possible to obtain MP3 ringtones legally. If you want to download ringtones for your cellphone, or use in your MP3 player, make sure that you do so legally.