#Mp3

2 items

A Diamond Rio PMP300, the 1998 flash-memory MP3 player
Tech 1998–2004

Early MP3 Players

The flash-memory bricks that freed your MP3s from the desktop. Diamond's Rio PMP300, arriving in September 1998 at $200, was the first MP3 player that actually caught on — deck-of-cards sized, running forever on one AA battery, holding maybe eight or ten songs. No moving parts meant no skips, a revelation after a decade of portable CD players. The RIAA sued to kill it; the courts sided with you instead.

Video thumbnail — What Happened To Winamp?
Tech 1997–2003 peak

Winamp

The media player that ran the MP3 era. Winamp's dark little window with the glowing green equalizer, endlessly customizable skins, and the MilkDrop visualizer pulsing to your music was where a generation organized its first ripped-and-downloaded music collection — and yes, it really whipped the llama's ass.