Aww man, that just took me down memory lane. Minidisc was, imo, the peak of portable music players. Huge capacity, swappable/tradeable media, excellent sound quality, the little inline screen you mentioned. A quick Amazon search shows they're still available.

There are still simple MP3 players around, with SD card slots.

So you can have lots of music with you ... and have a smaller device and be able to jump around with it