I think there could be another iPod age.
Imagine a device with 10Tb of flash memory, an E-Ink display and 2.5 million songs.
Discovering Bandcamp has been great, though. On the listener side you have a "collection" of music you've bought, a "wishlist" of music you haven't paid for but plan to at some point (most albums are fully streamable before buying), and a "feed" where you can follow artists you like to keep track of new releases. You can also follow other listeners with tastes similar to yours, for which the Bandcamp site provides recommendations. When there's nothing new in the feed, the "discover" tab and the Bandcamp Weekly podcast are both good ways to explore new music.
I would love a device like the one you describe. Having shopped for dedicated MP3 players recently, the current gold standard seems to be the Sansa Clip+, and even that device is relatively dated. As long as it supports normal USB-stick-like file/folder management, without some iTunes clone to wrestle with.
Only in the last couple years, when I started flying for work, did I realize I had virtually no mp3s anymore. So I've been working on gathering music to use in offline mode at airports.
The conclusion that I've made is that before i had to _curate_ my own music. Go and search for new releases, download new and totally unknown stuff that I later went through and actually listened to. In a way the whole "setup" forced me to listen to new stuff. Now that I have everything online, i more and more just tend to listen to the same stuff that "i already know" over and over again, hence it gets more and more uninteresting to actually listen to it.
In a way I have everything available, which makes me not forced to go out and search for the music I like and find interesting.
edit: A lot of talking about recommendations and music discovery further down. My input on that; I'm fortunate to have been using last.fm, even from before they changed name to last.fm. So I have a large history in there. That is the place that gives me the best recommendations and discovery so far. Their recommendations are spot on, and a good way to find new and good music is to go to "people like you" and see what they are listening to that is unknown for you.
Yea that is exactly my sentiment. There was a time when I was cool to walk/drive about and listen to music. Now my data plan pushes me over the fence into silence.
I don't see any real need for a "new iPod" now though. Yeah, SSD slots for new phones are a bit less common than they should be, nut it's still bearable. For me the phone itself is what's inconvenient, not the absense of your whole audio-library on it all the time (browsing it on the phone would be painful anyway).
My one strange requirement is that I want to play music on a headless computer hooked up to my stereo system, and control it remotely with a nice interface (including discovery, etc.). Rdio did this basically by default. For spotify, I think I'll end up using mopidy as the player, but I'm not sure about the remote control yet. There's some conflicting information about whether spotify connect (their shared queue feature) is supported on linux or by 3rd party clients.
Moreover once I have done that I'm not even sure where my library will begin or end, does it end at the temporary stuff i'm listening to on the discovery radio or stuff that I have added to a playlist but not my library.
At least with MP3s it would be "I'm downloading these songs and they will be in my library because I enjoy them." Now i'm not even sure if I have a library.
Yes, +1. Bulk of my tracks are same old tracks that I used to tune in a decade ago in CD or cassette form. Radio is closest to what introduces me to new music, but they are limited and the decay is quick. May be quantity is lot more than what I(/we) can consume.
But that's just because before I was content with listening to the same stuff repeatedly, never did look out for more music on my accord.
Stopped doing streaming, but open to getting back into it, found some great music that way.