> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

I recently got the Shanling M0s. It runs its own OS and seems to me completely at parity with what MP3 players used to be back in the day; in fact I think it's the best one I've ever had, and I've been buying those devices since the Diamond Rio. If more people just got one, Shanling would no longer be a company nobody's ever heard of, and the economics would change to further bring down the price too (although I think it's not all that bad right now).