More software? Sure. An operating system? No. There were (are?) plenty of cheap MP3 players that had screens but just drive it with some budget microcontroller.
One of the best places to have MD is in a car. You can quickly identify (by unique color or label) each disc, which is either a full album presented as the artist intended or a playlist you curated. There's no "shuffle all 5000 songs" or "here's a playlist Spotify calls 80s kitchen songs but is half 90s pop you've heard before"
I don't want to fiddle with my phone and get blasted by light from the screen.
I don't want to swipe through an infinite list of all music known to man.
I don't want to wait for an app to update, page to load, song to buffer or pop-up upselling me to need to be dismissed.
I want to listen to music I own, on a device I own, which instantly responds when I press play. That's it.
You can buy new shells, colors, storage adapters, batteries, etc.
Given how much we can store in solid state not sure I’d want to navigate my library without a screen
(I do think they need a minimum size to be usable but companies can be creative with the form factor)