It’s a Creative Zen Stone that I got as a Christmas gift in 2008. I just found it in a drawer, and it’s still holding charge. The last thing I put on it was The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen, in 2015 – I don’t know why, at that time I definitely had a smartphone.
It has a headphone jack, which immediately makes it better than every smartphone produced in the last several years, and it can easily drive my 80-ohm Beyerdynamic. The audio quality is as good as one can expect. The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB… my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.
Let me reiterate that this has been sitting untouched for a decade and was immediately ready for action. No login, no annoying software updates, expired subscription, or remote bricking by the manufacturer. Eat my shorts, Spotify Car Thing.
P.s. A Lifetime Of Adventure is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k
It’s not a perfect solution/alternative, but if you’re on apple hardware you might want to take a look at MiniMoon music player.
I’ve been using it for a good while now on my phone and while it has some quirks, the dev is responsive and its updated regularly. Full version is a one time fee and it supports FLAC audio. Getting your music synced and sorted might take a bit of time but I’m glad I got off subscription-based music services.
https://www.plastaq.com/minimoon
If it’s not cross platform I’m barfin