1,029 Songs Appear on Apple Music Error Pages for iPod's 25th Anniversary

Apple has turned its own broken pages into a distribution channel, posting a working replica of the original iPod on Apple Music error screens to mark 25 years since the device was unveiled. Users who hit a dead link see a line reading "give this a spin instead" beneath the page-not-found notice, which opens a functioning virtual player.

The replica carries a library of 1,029 playable songs, a number that nods to the original pitch of putting 1,000 songs in your pocket. Playback on each track stops at 90 seconds. The interface reproduces the hardware layout, with Playlists, Artists, Songs and Settings menus, and the click wheel responds to input. No Apple Music account is required to use it.

The catalog leans toward the period: Baha Men, blink-182 and Eminem appear, alongside Daniel Bedingfield, The Fratellis and Klaxons for the reviewer working from the UK, who could not confirm whether the same artists show up for listeners in the US. Engadget's account describes the controls as responsive but buggy, recommends a phone or touch screen where the wheel feels closer to the real device, and reports trouble getting it to run at all on a desktop computer.

Notebook Check found Brick, the Breakout-style game that shipped as a hidden extra on the first iPod, reachable through the same route as on the hardware: holding the center button on the About screen for a few seconds.

The effort sits inside a wider push on Apple's part to keep older devices in circulation. The company continues to sell and service hardware it first shipped decades ago, and the replica puts a 2001 product back in front of anyone who mistypes a URL. Apple did not say how long the feature will remain on its error pages.