This was the Rio PMP300, the MP3 player that conquered the public before the iPod

Currently, the consumption of music occurs mainly through streaming platforms. If we want to listen to a song or an album, we simply have to enter an app like Spotify, search for its name and voilà! In the mid-1990s, several years before the arrival of the iPod, the picture was completely different.

The music industry promoted its distribution ecosystem, whose main pillar was the compact disc (CD), but the arrival of the MP3 compression format and advances in connectivity began to challenge it. People could copy a large amount of music onto their computers, either from CDs or downloaded from the Internet.

The music industry was changing

Some players in the technology industry saw an opportunity in this scenario. Why carry a player like the Sony Discman when you could use a much smaller device capable of do without even compact discs? A new era in music consumption was dawning with the advent of MP3 players.

Although some options appeared on the market such as the MPMan F10Diamond Multimedia, which you may remember for its graphics or sound cards, was the company behind the first commercially successful portable MP3 player. We’re talking about the Rio PMP300, a device that came long before Apple’s iPod.

The 1998 announcement of the Rio PMP300, which promised to store up to 60 minutes of music, sparked the fury of the US music industry. How CNET collectsthe Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) feared that the device would negatively impact its distribution ecosystem, so it developed certain legal gimmicks to prevent its commercialization.

The RIAA claimed that the player violated the Home Audio Recording Act of 1992 which stated that digital audio recording devices they had to pay royalties and include a copy management system to prevent the copying of illegal music. “We know that Diamond says that he is a player, but we understand that he is a recorder,” they said.

“It’s a playback device, not a recording device,” Diamond said in his defense. After much back and forth, the courts in California, the state where the lawsuit had been filed, determined that the Rio PMP300 was not a recording device, so it was finally not considered a violation of current legislation. Consequently, sales continued until it became a success.

But what features did the device have? According to the user manualas we mentioned, had 32MB internal memory, but users had the possibility to expand it with 16 MB SmartMedia cards. As a curious fact, the original iPod, which hit the market in 2001, was offered with 5 GB of memory and was promoted with the successful slogan “1,000 songs in your pocket”.

iPod (2001)

At the connectivity level, the Rio PMP300 had a proprietary connector that worked with a cable with a parallel port that connected to the computer. To transfer the music (MP2 and MP3 files), it was necessary to use the Music Match program. And it did not work with an internal battery, but with AA batteries, which provided between 8 and 12 hours of autonomy.

As for the design, this curious MP3 player stood out for its small dimensions, the size of a deck of cards, and its LCD screen, although this only showed the track number and playing time. The control system, with a small circular keyboard with the skip, play and stop buttons did not go unnoticed either.

Time magazine notes that Diamond offered the device beginning Christmas 1998 to a introductory price of 200 dollars. Later it also introduced a version with 64 MB of internal memory and a transparent casing that cost $50 more. The company sold 200,000 units of this model.

After merging with S3 Incorporated and being renamed SONICblue it released other Rio series devices which did not reach the same level of success. The iPod, with the help of iTunes, became the most notorious disruptor in the music industry, but products like the Rio PMP300 had certainly begun to lay the groundwork for changes to come.

Images: Staarline (Freepik)

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