[ofrzeta]

You are right that this is probably the more reasonable thing to do. I was just thinking that 1) I want to use full-size cards for better haptic and 2) have the actual data stored on the media. For instance when you are in the car with your playback box and the SD card you can listen without a network connection. But I concede that I am stubborn and this will probably be a dead end :)

[ndriscoll]

You still don't need a network connection. Put a drive or SD card with all of your music in the player itself. You could put several hundred CDs worth of music in FLAC on a device for like $20, or up to like 4,000 CDs with a 2TB card (or 16,000 with an 8 TB drive), so probably more than anyone could reasonably own (or manage for a physical collection). Pennies of amortized storage cost per album even if you have multiple devices. It's nothing next to the cost of legally acquiring the music.

[ofrzeta]

That's a neat trick.