(I am asking these questions excitedly, not dubiously)
One of the best purchases I did these past years. Make sure to get a silicone case and a lanyard.
> To use such a thing, where would I get downloadable DRM free music these days?
https://www.supraphonline.cz/ is my favorite source: they have about everything. You can buy track-by-track or the full album. You get FLAC files immediately.
> What software do I use to sync it to an Android device?
Your regular file manager, doing a drag and drop from the ~/Downloads folder
> What software do I use to browse and play it on an Android device?
The default Sony player isn't bad, but there are 2 other extremely good players: Musicolet (great for it support of lyrics if you are into Opera or Rap) and PowerAMP (great if you have a USB Dongle or new bluetooth headphones and want to make sure the codec support is adequate)
Exactly what I'm looking for -- except the whole site is in Czech!
I usually do one of the following:
1) Purchase physical CDs from Amazon that include "AutoRip" on the description. This provides a DRM-free mp3 version of the album that you can download.
2) In the event that an AutoRip is not available, do the rip myself. I still have a USB CD/DVD drive that I plug-in to my laptop for this purpose, and a tiny VM to run Exact Audio Copy.
3) Finally, for purchasing digital music outright, there's always Bandcamp.
I suppose itunes is still around, too, but to be honest I've never used it.
Obviously there is also Bandcamp. 7digital is also missing from that list.
<p>One option is the same place you used to get downloadable DRM free music in the past, your local bittorrent client.