Time to release your music on an MP3 player which are also known as MP4 players. The clever random mode on an MP3 player shuffles up your songs, playing them randomly. You can also store all your songs on a player small enough to fit in your pocket. But where does your MP3 player hold all your music?

It was common in the past, for MP3 players to use an internal mini hard drive to for data storage. Having a mini hard drive means the MP3 player has lots room to hold music files. The Apple iPod Classic MP3 player has up to 160GB storage and Archos also has players with similar capacity. One of the drawbacks though, of using mini hard drives in MP3 players, is that they make the players more bulky and heavier. They also demand more power to run, so potentially decrease the battery run time.

Newer MP3 players use flash memory, in fact almost all MP3 players made now are fitted with internal flash memory. They can often hold an additional SD memory card to increase the overall player storage capacity.

There are some important advantages to using flash memory in MP3 players, which have benefited both manufactures and consumers. Flash memory is cheaper, lighter, and smaller than a hard drive, they also use less power, which leads to better battery life; and this means that flash based MP3 players can be much smaller and cheaper than hard drive based models.

Flash memory does have some disadvantages though. The storage capacity is significantly smaller than a hard drive, typically between 8GB – 16GB. The price for additional SD cards can be expensive.

MP3 players can do more than just play music. Most of them have LCD color displays ranging from a very small 1.8 inch to much larger 4.3 inch or 5 inch,. ONDA and Archos even produce MP3 players that have a 7 inch screen. This has changed the scope of MP3 players from just listing to music, to being able to watch videos too. While watching feature film on small screen may be a strain on the eyes, the larger screens are ideal.

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