yes! PhonieBox - But you built it yourself [0]. You make your own cards with nfc/rfid stickers in them, put a nfc/rfid reader somewhere nice, and hooked up to phoniebox rpi with spotify to a nice sound system.

https://github.com/MiczFlor/RPi-Jukebox-RFID

Like some others, I built my own too: https://rdeaton.space/posts/screenless-digital-jukebox/

We have a Yoto here as well, for our six-year-old.

The concept is great - RFID as a replacement for cassette audiobooks (with fewer storage limitations!).

I do wish it integrated better with sources of free audiobooks. The Libby app gets us access to a lot of audiobooks through the public library, many of which are not even available for purchase through the Yoto player. We can only use it to play them for him as a Bluetooth speaker from our phones, which removes a lot of the utility of the player (he can't navigate chapters, we can't set a sleep timer, we can't use our phones for other things).

The concept is great though and the specific product, walled content garden notwithstanding, has been a net win for us.

Tonie boxes are extremely widespread in Germany, and while the media are similarly priced, there's a huge used market and public libraries have them as well. Nothing is tied to a specific account or box, so there are no restrictions on resale or lending. Almost shocking in this day and age.

The blank cards they sell are great. We borrow audio books from the library and I rip them to a card, you can reuse them as well so don’t need to buy too many. I also put radio streams on them, like classical stations for when my sons going to bed.

They have blank cards. They're a minor pain to set up in their UI, you have to get the audio files from somewhere, and you have to print a sticker so it's a bit of work but very doable.

People already mentioned the blank cards, but the Yoto club subscription is actually a pretty great deal. You get a ton of credits that you can just apply to books and the value works out pretty well.

You do have to watch out for Short content, but if you were buying audiobooks on Audible, you’d have the same issue .

Is this available to replicate? I've been thinking about this for some time, for music albums, specifically.

I second the Yoto. My son and I have had much fun making our own cards and I got pretty good at extracting audiobooks from YouTube, processing them with audacity and making cards of book series that he was into. You can fit a staggering amount onto a single card (5hrs of audio if memory serves).

Honestly that was the biggest extra feature for us, we quickly exhausted all the Yoto store content that appealed, and weren't into any of the big franchise content (except a pleasantly surprising read of Pixar's "Cars") or joining the Yoto club.

I thought the same before we actually got a Yoto. This is one of those "I could easily DIY that" things that you really couldn't.