The very first MP3 player?

Think you know what the first MP3 player was? Even we had bought into the urban legend that it was Diamond Multimedia's Rio PMP300, but Eliot Van Buskirk does a little debunking over at CNET, pointing out that the very first one to come out was actually Saehan's MPMan, a 32MB (yeah, megabyte) player which was sold in the US as the Eiger Labs MPMan F10/F20 a few months before the first Rio arrived. So why weren't they sued by the RIAA just like Diamond was? Because South Korea-based Saehan wasn't as easy to take to court as Diamond, which was headquartered in California. Not that not being sued seemed to make much of a difference for Saehan—the company has all but disappeared in the six and a half years since they first introduced the MPMan.

[george @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I still have my pmp300 laying around, still works but i lost the data cable, stuck with the same songs.

[jay vaughan @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

i thought the "PJB-100" (from Compaq) was one of the first portable MP3 players with a hard drive, anyway ...

... still got mine. it still rocks. wish i could write my own apps for it, however .. uses the same DSP as in our synths ...

[Jayson @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

You can still find the PMP300 on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000K5DS/104-9359154-3139914?v=glance (out of stock, natch)

[Alan Smith @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I have one still. The rechargable battery in it is dead, and I can't figure out how to unload it without a rechargable battery.

[Thejonson @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I still have mine, and it is still in fully working order, although my latest box has no parallel port to hook it up with.

[kc @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

A little clarification - Saehan didn't really develop the MPMan. They just tried to market it (poorly). It was created by a small engineering firm in Korea, which was acquired by Diamond Multimedia to help create the Rio PMP300. So, the products have the same genesis. As to the RIAA- they went after the Rio because prior to launching the product, the Diamond folks paid visits to the music industry folks saying "look at this cool product we are launching. Digital music is the future. Come play with us", to which the music cronies arogantly replied "No you are not. No it isn't. No thanks." (right before they called Hilary and Cary at the RIAA to give them the heads-up). Anyway, Saehan was a corporate consulting firm that hadn't a clue about how to market such products, but Diamond did and threrefore represented a bigger threat. Also, as you say, they were based in California and a much easier target.

Now you know the rest of the story (well, some of it anyway).

[Luke @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Wow! I am an early adopter! I had no idea the MPMan was the first. I used it for quite a while before it developed some fatal problem which prompted me to introduce it to a wall. at high velocity. MPMangled.

Did they ever offer software to sync it to Win2K or XP? I recall having a dual boot just so I could change out the songs on it.

[ChillyWilly @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I forgot about the MPMan.

Still have my first MP3 player, the Rio PMP300 (in iMac blue color) with 32Mb.

For those with XP or Win2K, there's a program called Dreaming of Brazil that will allow you to add and remove MP3s from the older Rio models. Works very well and it's free. Just do a Google search for "dreaming of brazil"

[Iang @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

First sighting: http://iang.org/rants/rtprio.html :-)

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I still have mine aswell. Never got around to buying a SmartMedia card to increase the memory.
Mine took an AA battrey, not a rechargable though.
No idea it was the first. I must have gotten mine after it had been out in the market for a while, because I can remember reading about other MP3 players before I got it.

[Adam Lynch @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Wow... I had an MPMan, as well. As others have said, the battery tanked on me after about 6months of use. I did end up replacing that battery with one I'd found in a parts catalog, but it never fit the housing quite right.

I ended up selling it to the little brother of a buddy of mine... After I had gotten an RCA Lyra with a *64mb* CF card.

[Rick Addison @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Does anyone recall a show on Discovery called "Beyond 2000"? They had an electronic device that played "music" from some sort of RAM/ROM in 1988. Was that MP3? I don't know if that format was even around. Musings from a neophyte.

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

First hard-drive-based MP3 player in the world: the Hango/Remote Solutions Portable Jukebox PJB-100...

I have my Remote Solutions PJB 6.4GB - never really used it much...back then I had a huge collection and getting them all to upload onto it kept stalling, it was sloow too....anyways must've paid some $700 for it with all accessories - not well spent, but then again Mp3s are what first drew me to PCs back in 1998 and sort of opened the door to me becoming a techie...

never figured out what to do with it - still hold onto it for senttimental purposes...although maybe someone on EBAY wants it. EMAIl: [e-mail]

[Mix @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I'm a little fuzzy on mp3 player history, but im sure this was released before the iPod. So I'm wondering if the design was copied by Apple... or if they just buy/ripoff the design.

[Khaytsus @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Uh no you're just a moron, Mix, that IS an iPod beside it. Obligatory garbage, etc etc. If someone mentions mp3, you must include an iPod in the text or picture somewhere, did you miss the meeting? Regardless that there are better, cheaper players out there (read: Creative).

[Mix @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Khaytsus. Thanks for the clarification. For some reason when I looked at the picture the first time I thought the Diamond Rio was a case... i was tired.

[Josh A. @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I owned one of those bastards when the first came out. It was silver. The worst part was having to explain what a MP3 player was to other people. i crammed 8 songs on that bad boy. How times have changed.

[zed @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

yes, but does it play ogg???

[Kendall Willets @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I'm not sure why this is news. I remember the Koreans pushing hard to get into the consumer electronics market, and they jumped on MP3 players as a way to beat Sony's Walkman.

At one point I emailed Michael Roberts at MP3.com about one of these Korean players (probably Saehan's); it was kind of unexpected at the time, since MP3's were mainly a desktop phenomenon. Since then Korea has grown to be a huge internet and electronics player, Sony has shrunk, and MP3 players have become commonplace.