It officially has been 20 years since Apple announced the upcoming release of one of its most iconic products: the iPod. The company unveiled the first version of its handheld music player to the world on Oct. 23, 2001, and it went on sale the following month.
With the slogan “1,000 songs in your pocket,” the first-generation iPod was quick to capture the public’s attention and was the companion to the newly unveiled iTunes, the digital music software that ushered in a new era of how people listen to music. Apple went on to sell more than 400 million iPods, according to The New York Times.
After its release in 2001, and being helped along by the iTunes music store, became one of the most iconic gadgets of all time, spawning a host of imitators and legitimizing the market of MP3 players that it dominated. The iPod has evolved and radically changed over time: It’s now an iPhone without the cellular radio.
But you can still buy an iPod Touch on Apple’s website (you need to dig for it at the bottom of the home page), a testament to its remarkable longevity in an industry where last year’s gadget is quickly forgotten.
When Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997 after a 12-year absence, the company was on the verge of losing it all, but the iPod, which NPR described in 2009 as a “quantum leap in listening,” was one of the products that turned things around. Though ubiquitous smartphones have largely replaced portable devices solely dedicated to music, Apple still sells one product under the iPod name: the iPod touch.
At present, the Apple store offers one iPod Touch. Apple Music, the streaming service that replaced iTunes in 2019, has more than 60 million paid subscribers, compared with Spotify’s 165 million paying users.
