To understand what an MP3 player is we must first consider another question.

What is an MP3?

First off the official technical definition - an MP3 is a digital audio file compressed using a standard defined by the Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG). It is officially known as "MPEG-1, Layer 3". Which in layman terms means that boffin's created a way of using less space to store a normal digital file. MP3s can use as little as 10% of the storage required by the CD format.

What is an MP3 Player?

An MP3 player is quite simply a device for playing MP3 files. MP3 players come in many physical sizes, storage capacities and they do not all work the same. There are two basic types of MP3 Players Flash based Players and Hard Drive-based Players.

Flash Based Players

The smallest MP3 players use a type of memory known as flash; unlike conventional memory such as that found in a desktop computer, flash does not lose stored information when the power is turned off. Flash is very compact and uses very little power, allowing for extremely small designs with long battery life. However these devices have limits on how much the can actually store, most flash players have a limit of approx 8gb which equates to approximately 2000 songs. The most well established flash player on the market is the iPod nano from Apple. Nowadays you can buy an MP3 player for less than £10 - it will probably only hold around 500 songs for that price.

Hard drive based Players

The limitation of flash-based MP3 players is that they do not have a great deal of storage capacity. For larger storage needs, hard disk-based MP3 players were developed. These devices read digital audio files from a hard drive. These players have higher capacities, ranging from 1.5GB to 160GB, depending on the hard drive technology. These can have storage capacities in the tens of thousands of songs and perhaps an entire music collection can be stored on one player, but they sacrifice the ultra compactness of flash-based players. Hard disk-based MP3 players are also generally more expensive. Because of the storage capacity, devices that also display video and pictures are often hard-drive based.

iPod Revolution

A common misconception is that MP3 Players where invented by Apple and that iPod was the first mp3 player to hit the market. While not invented by Apple, it was Apple's line of iPod MP3 players that popularized the devices. It was their distinctive white headphones and Lucite and chrome styling, coupled with extreme ease of use, iPod's soon dominated the portable MP3 player market.