• prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I had a aftermarket head unit that played mp3 cds in 2002.

      I had a mp3 player in 1999.

      We were definitely burning cds back then, this woulda come at a premium but the tech was there.

      • Mario_Dies.wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        I remember downloading mp3s from usenet in 1999 on my Windows 95 computer. I’d start the download, go to work, then retrieve the file when I got home.

        I felt so fancy buying a CD burner at Best Buy so I could burn them onto CDs. It was the first PC component I ever installed by myself.

      • ramble81@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        BMWs in 2002 used Alpine head units. I knew their aftermarket units could play MP3 CDs so I thought “why not test it out?” Turns out it could play it just fine. It mapped the folder buttons to the seek/scan buttons if you held it and played them just fine. I was floored it did that but wasn’t anywhere in the manual.

      • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        My brother had an mp3 player in 1999. I think it had 16MB of storage space. I didn’t see the point of it when you could only put like 5 songs on the thing.

        • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          I could fit roughly 1 hour of music on mine, longer if I dropped the bitrate to 96kbps instead of 128.

          The biggest benefit of the mp3 player was that the anti-skip protection didn’t drain the battery twice as fast, no moving parts so it never skipped. This seemed super cool to me because I skateboarded and stuff and generally liked the idea of no skips.