Before the doom scrolling screen epidemic kicked in. 💽🎧🎵🎶
Here's the modern way to get music onto your Sony NetMD, with just your browser: https://web.minidisc.wiki/
Web MiniDisc Pro - Version 1.5.3

Copy audio to your NetMD MiniDisc device using only a web browser. Replace SonicStage, improve audio quality, and unlock new features.

@Gammitin i fucking loved these tubular remotes in the cords!
@Gammitin I loved MiniDisc soooooooo much. I did eventually concede that MP3 had it beat but it was a glorious 5 or so years that it reigned in my personal music world!
@wiredfire @Gammitin I completely missed out on MDs and sometimes kind of wonder what it felt like. Though being basically owned and controlled by SONY kills it for me anyway. Still, it was a really neat tech for the time.
@nazokiyoubinbou @Gammitin It was great, if niche. Folk kept comparing it to CD when it wasn't intended to replace that. Compared to the cassette tapes it was really superseding it was basically all the benefits of cd (track skipping, track names etc) with much better audio quality than tape, but not as good as cd. For portability it was a great trade-off
@wiredfire @Gammitin Didn't they use some form of ATRAC3? I guess lossiness of a level putting it below CD would have been by design for fitting more and to help avoid buffer underruns. I think ATRAC3 and its successors is actually able to sound pretty close to CD quality at the expense of being larger and maybe less compatible. At least I know later implementations like whatever they used in the PSP SDK got pretty impressive. (I think that was based on ATRAC3 Pro? I don't remember... Ah, proprietary stuff...)
@nazokiyoubinbou @Gammitin Yeah ATRAC3 was when MD picked up the traction it did. Was at least as good quality as your average MP3 of the era, and absolutely good enough for most people's on-the-go needs. Again considering it was competing with cassette rather than CD it was more than good enough heh. I really wanted MDs to be used more as data discs too.. they were miles better and more robust that a floppy or zip disc and hold round 150mb or so
@Gammitin I approve of any and all MiniDisc stuff.
@Gammitin Oh heck, an MZ-N710! I've got one of these, it was my first Minidisc recorder!
@Gammitin I've got that exact same model, and use it daily! (Wish I had the charging dock for it though).

@Gammitin I 💖my NetMD little player.

The ability to fit several albums on one disc. The inline remote I bought from eBay to control the player that sat in my inside pocket. The battery life seemed like ages, but I always carried an AA battery that could be screwed onto the bottom to provide emergency power.

Sadly, I lost it in a burglary.

@UKFilmNerd I used mine day in, day out for commuting - over 4 hours a day, 6 days a week. This MD player got me through some hard times man. Sad that you lost yours to a burglary, same happened to me with my childhood game gear, they'd stopped selling them by them so I couldn't replace it - that s#*t hurts man. 😢
@Gammitin I would've bought another but it was now the time of the MP3 player.