By Narayan Saimbi
Towards the back end of last month, I wrote an article talking about how Gen Z is rejecting cloud music streaming for physical media and single-purpose devices. As of October 2025, I am happy to say that I have subscribed to this mindset- except not quite in the way you might imagine.
When you see the TikToks and Instagram Reels talking about physical media as a way to listen to music, people tend to show off old iPods, Walkmans and generic MP3 players they’ve found on Amazon or eBay. However, I present to you a different device, a device whose sole intention was never just to listen to music. Introducing: the Sony Playstation Portable (a.k.a ‘PSP’ for short)
Why the PSP?
After writing that previous article, I did toy with the idea of getting an MP3 player, as it would be lightweight and wouldn’t take up much more room in my pockets. After all, I do still need to have my phone on me, for things like phone calls, texts and navigation.
But after acquiring my PSP in Tokyo (and promptly fixing it up), I fell in love with the device, its interface and most importantly, its music-playing capabilities. Maybe it was due to the form factor, or maybe it was due to the hours I spent trying to get the device to work, but the PSP has undoubtedly replaced by smartphone in terms of consuming media.
It should be noted that the PSP was truly ahead of its time. You could play games, watch movies, listen to music- hell, you could even use it as a makeshift camcorder if you wanted. It was the portable media player, before the release of the iPhone brought smartphones to the mainstream.
Image Credits: O Taillon (Flickr)
So why should I use the PSP, when my smartphone can do everything the PSP can and more? Well, it’s the same argument that supports the use of any physical media in the first place.
With a smartphone, everything is (quite literally) at your fingertips. Within seconds, you can effortlessly switch between listening to music, loading up a Youtube video or scrolling through short-form content on Instagram or TikTok. But with the PSP, that doesn’t exist.
You have to choose what goes into the device. With no capacity for cloud streaming, I have to purposefully pick what albums, movies and games I load onto it, taking into account the amount of data the device can hold. This level of intention is the reason why people switch to using physical media- it produces a more active experience when consuming content, rather just listening to a random playlist for the sake of doing so.
Is the PSP perfect as a music player? Of course not. The sound is tinny, the speakers aren’t amazing and organising tracks to be in a specific order is admittedly a bit of a headache. I also haven’t completely removed Spotify out of my life. For something like the gym, being able to connect wireless earbuds to my phone is wholly more practical than connecting a wire across my body to the PSP. But for day-to-day use, I find that using the PSP to listen to my music is just so much more fulfilling than using Spotify on my phone.
This is not something I can quantifiably measure- hell, I don’t know if anyone can. But I can almost guarantee that using an MP3 player, or equivalent device, over cloud streaming will force you to think a lot more about the music you actually enjoy, and make the songs that you love stand out to you just so much more.
I have to say, technology was so much cooler in the 2000s than it is today. Let’s bring some of these devices back once more.
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