5 MP3 players before the iPod

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Originally released on November 10, 2001, Apple’s iPod has forever transformed the way people listen to music. Featuring a 5GB hard drive capable of holding up to 1,000 songs, it also had an LCD screen, 10 hours of battery life and a ‘Scroll Wheel’ controller. At the time, the device was revolutionary, but today some users are still deciding what to do with their old iPods. As important as the Apple player was in the history of technology, it wasn’t the first MP3 player – not by a long shot.

Below are five MP3 players released before Apple’s iPod. We’re not only looking at the first publicly available MP3 player, but we’re also exploring devices that experimented with unique features, changed the way we think about MP3 players, and even resulted in lawsuits. The path to the technology we know and love today has been a rather bumpy one, even though these devices helped pave the way for how we listen to our tunes.

While there are still several older iPods worth buying in 2026, the hunt for these MP3 players may be more about owning a piece of history than owning something usable. Don’t worry, we won’t need a time machine to know where we’re going. Just make sure your MP3 player is charged before this trip down memory lane.

Released in the spring of 1998, the MPMan F-10 is often considered the first commercially available portable MP3 player. Developed by SeaHan Electronics in South Korea, it was initially only available in a few Asian countries, but nonetheless helped pave the way for how we consume media today. Although old-school iPods are making a comeback, today’s users would likely avoid these devices due to their paltry storage.

There’s actually a bit of an interesting story regarding the F-10. Its developer, Mr. Moon, was a general manager at Samsung when he got the idea to create the MP3 player after seeing someone on a flight using a Minidisk player. Although he presented the device to Samsung, the company was then facing financial problems and rejected his idea. Mr. Moon would leave Samsung and join Seashan Information Systems, which launched the device in Korea and Japan on May 2, 1998.

Available for 59,800 yen ($372.85 in today’s US dollars), the MPMan came in 32MB and 64MB models. That’s right, megabytes, meaning even the largest model would be lucky if it could hold an entire album. With 32MB containing only about eight 3.5-minute songs, the drives also suffered from slow transfer speeds. However, the original model came with a rechargeable battery providing 8 hours of battery life, as well as a docking station – although both of these features were removed from the F-20 model that arrived in the United States in the summer of 1998 via Eiger Labs.

Launched in 1998 and available for around $200, the Diamond Rio PMP300 is generally considered the first commercially successful MP3 player. With a storage capacity of 32MB, it could hold about the same number of songs as the MPMan, although it had a slightly larger LCD screen. Given its low storage options, this is most likely an old-fashioned gadget that no one uses anymore.

Bulky and requiring a single AA battery to operate, the PMP300 was notable for how its release had the potential to forever change the way users listened to music. After the PMP300 went on sale, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sought an injunction against Diamond Multimedia to stop the sale of the device. Citing the Home Audio Recording Act of 1992, the RIAA argued that the PMP300 violated the law by potentially copying CD audio and playing it in MP3 format without legally being an audio recorder. Ultimately, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court would rule against the RIAA because moving recordings from one device to another in a non-commercial manner would be considered moving space rather than creating new material.

Additionally, the RIAA also took offense to the fact that the Diamond company has its own digital download service, known as RioPort. However, that won’t stop the PMP300 from selling over 200,000 units after the RIAA lawsuits. The device would eventually be discontinued, and today Diamond Multimedia focuses more on digital analog media transfer accessories, as well as other computer accessories.

Released in November 1999, development of the Personal Jukebox (PJB) began in Palo Alto, California, at Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) Systems Research Center (SRC). The DEC would eventually be sold to Compaq Computer Corporation, and although Compaq would continue to develop the MP3 player, it would never release it to the public. Instead, the device was licensed to South Korean manufacturer HanGo Electronics Co., Ltd (which later became Remote Solution). The company would begin selling the devices in November 1999.

Perhaps the most telling feature of the PJB-100 is that it relies on a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive to store music, making it the first hard drive-based MP3 player. With a storage capacity of 4.86 GB, the device boasted of being able to store 110 hours of music in CD quality. The device also had 12GB of DRAM, allowing users to cache up to 12 minutes of music to reduce stress on the drive. It also had 10 hours of battery life thanks to its rechargeable lithium-ion battery, as well as a rather large LCD screen for the time.

Even though the PJB-100 was considered slow and lacked a good user interface, it nevertheless earned its place in the technology history books thanks to its disk-based design. It’s also worth noting that the device itself was rather bulky, especially since it housed a laptop drive. Today we can tell you what happened to Compaq and its computers, as Remote Solution now focuses almost exclusively on the development and distribution of TV remote controls.

First released in September 2000, the Creative Nomad Jukebox retailed for $499.99 and touted the ability to store 100 hours of “high quality digital music” with its 6 GB of storage. Although the design resembled a CD player, its main physical interface included various media controls. However, one thing that made the Nomad interesting was that, in addition to allowing users to convert their CDs to MP3 and transfer them to the device, they could also use the device to record live audio. It also supports WMA and WAV files.

For a device released at the turn of the century, it contained some other impressive features. Requiring four AA batteries to operate (it came with a spare set), it nonetheless came with an adjustable playback speed, a parametric EQ, two line outputs for FourPointSurround surround sound support, and a digital signal processor (DSP) board for customizing audio playback. By 2005, the company was making two separate MP3 players: the Nomad and the Creative Zen.

Creative boasted that it had beaten Apple in the MP3 player market, and the two would find themselves in a patent dispute over how users interacted with MP3 players. The battle would end with Apple giving Creative $100 million to use its interface patents. Today, Creative still focuses on sound, including its own Creative Zen Air headphones. Although things might have been different if Apple had won its cases, the original Creative Nomad can still be a useful old USB gadget.

You may have already noticed that MP3 players of the past had one major problem: they were either small and sacrificed storage, or they had plenty of storage space but were too large to carry around. Although it is difficult to understand this problem today, the i2Go EGo MP3 player available in 2000 thought it had a solution. The EGo supported expandable storage, but at a high cost.

Although you can get the EGo with up to 2GB (about 1,000 songs) of storage thanks to IBM’s Microdrive technology, that would cost you more than $2,000 because each 1GB drive costs $1,000. However, other storage options were available and the device had some unique features as well. In addition to the device’s car radio kit for vehicle connections, the MP3 player could also download emails and play them back to you. You can even save the answers and convert them to text on a computer.

The device would cost users between $299 and $699, depending on their storage options, and i2Go planned to develop a player that would allow users to download music wirelessly. However, although the company ran a promotion in which the devices were given away as promotional items during the 2000 Oscars, i2Go eventually shut it down in 2002. Considering it might still be possible to buy an iPod in 2026, this one might just be a curiosity for those interested in archaic technology.