It's the end of an era - Apple are discontinuing their flagship iPod after 20 years on the market.

The mp3 player, which transformed how we consume music, was first launched in 2001 but has gradually become more redundant with the rise of streaming services.

A statement from Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said “Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared."

He added "today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products," including the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

For music lovers who still want to get their hands on an Ipod, they better act quick - Apple will be still be selling their iconic mp3 player through all the usual outlets such as Apple's website, the Apple store and your friendly neighbourhood electronics shop.

Apple has sold more than 450 million iPods since it first went on sale in 2001, with the intital model boasting 5GB of storage and allowing for up to 1000 songs to be stored.

The most recent model, the 7th generation iPod Touch, going all the way up to 256GB of storage, and with the advent of streaming, the entire history of music is available in your pocket.

The 7th generation iPod, which was released in 2019, will serve as the final hurrah for the mp3 player which changed the music landscape forever.

Initial models of the iPod were famous for their click wheel, the iPod nano introduced a colour screen, and the iPod shuffle allowed users to upload songs onto their device by means of flash memory.

Music fans have taken to Twitter to share their memories of the gadget, with many remembering the manual process for changing artist titles and songs.

What are your memories of the iPod? Let us know on our Facebook or Twitter!