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I want a portable music playing device that is not an iPod, and has greater than 250GB of storage.

So far, I have only found one candidate; FiiO X3 Portable MP3 Player: https://www.amazon.com/X5-64GB-Kit-Leather-Case/dp/B00K3X0B94/

I initially looked in to getting another Creative Zen, but their website only lists a few options and does not specify available storage space.

Next was the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (Generation 7) which boasted a 500GB hard drive with a 4.8 Inch display at 800x480 resolution and built in FM Radio. - This was actually the ideal device and I read many good reviews for it, however unfortunately the company no longer makes this particular model, and the maximum available storage space for devices that they do produce is only 32GB.

Other generic MP3 playing devices cap off at 8GB, and my smart phone a Samsung Galaxy SII (which is ancient by today's standards, I know) caps off at about 64GB of storage space, minus all the apps and botnet bullshit Google thinks I should have installed.

My use case is for my car, for my daily drive to work and at the moment my total music library is at around 240GB (of course I'm not going to be able to listen to all of it, on my commute, to and frow work, that totals about 40 minutes of my day, but I love having access to my entire library) my library is only expected to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. - We also don't have great internet coverage down here in Oz, plus I want to limit my ever-growing dependence on the internet.

After asking for recommendations from my tech savvy friends on social media,

In the past, back when my music library was under 5GB I had a Creative Zen, but it would appear they no longer have a high-capacity option anymore.

Of course, some one made the joke about Zune, as soon as someone mentioned that I actually remembered the iRiver, but they do the same thing that Creative does on their website; no info, no price just model numbers.Either Google is broken, or the only MP3 players available are iPods.

I didn't realise Sony still made Walkmans, I found the Walkman ZX1 (https://www.sony.com.au/product/nwz-zx1) but at 128GB, that's the best I've seen so far, The Sony Walkman ZX2 caught my attention at 128GB with expandable media, but now I just need to wait for it to come out in Australia.

On the DIY Path, Rock Box (https://www.rockbox.org/) a free replacement firmware for digital music players was mentioned, but I would need to get my hands on a supported device, and that makes me think about the DIY root, perhaps a Raspberry Pi with external hard drive attached to it would be sufficient?

Self-hosted Streaming was mentioned, I don't have a NAS at this stage, but one option suggested was to put all my music on my NAS and stream it from there.

As a test, one time I logged in to my desktop via RDP and stream music from there, however I ditn't like the load time and want to avoid big bulky desktops and media centers, I use YouTube for the same purpose as Spotify, however a lot of the music I listen to wouldn't be available on that kind of service,

Then the conversation goes to, why not just get Spotify, Pandora? Or Google Music?

For this I've got a few thoughts,

What if the service closes? - I guess, f#%k you then, although I doubt, we'll ever see a case of this with the services listed, it's still something worth considering as I don't wish to make the investment in hardware to run an application only to either have it become unsupported or the service shut down due to exponential costs, competition, or some other reason.

Catalogue rot - where they once had music I liked, but now, its no longer available, this occurs usually due to licensing bullshit, so in this case I'm actually better off with a pirated copy, although I'd rather pay the artists for their work, with a physical copy, but in that case it's a onetime fee, although I feel there is better value having the music available to stream, that makes a constant stream of revenue versus a onetime payment, that said, I see a future where streaming service companies will eventually start becoming greedy, or will fail to relicense media again,

The streaming service may also not have the music I like, a lot of the trash I listen to is rather old and not hip with the music of today's youth, this is sort of, part of the catalogue rot argument.

Dependent on the internet an DRM, having a constant requirement for an Internet connection can be annoying when you live in a country that doesn't have full coverage of Internet services,

DRM is another issue; I can foresee a future where companies will grow to an extent where it becomes an abuse of power and the product that you actually pay for won't be usable.

Service fees will just keep increasing.

There is an ever growing costs associated with a company and investors only want to see growth so there's always incentive to make the service cost a little more, each year, this is where the value proposition will deplete itself over the years.

Conclusion

I want to explore the Self-hosted streaming option in the future once I have the infrastructure set up, I hear the Synology app is quite good for this, perhaps a hybrid approach between using local storage and having data stored in the cloud that can be synced to my device might mitigate the need for a high-capacity device.

I also want to explore the DIY route in the near future...