I think that’s true for the arts in general. Unless you are both extraordinary talented and are able to get lots of people to recognize that talent it’s hard to make a living in the arts. Art is a wonderful thing to be passionate about, and it is an important part of life and society despite how some people tend to downplay its value. It’s rarely stable work. There is a reason why there are tropes like the starving artist or actors waiting tables.

Just keep in mind you can run into issues with some of the highest capacity cards. There are limits to how much music an ipod can handle depending on the generation which aren’t immediately obvious. Dankpods mentioned it in one of his older videos.

If you’re on a Mac, I think ipods are still recognized and you can use their software to sync and manage music. You can only sync over music you own so no apple music obviously.

FiiO makes some pretty good stuff. I love my BTR5 to use with some of my wired headphones. I recently bought an Echo Mini cause I liked the retro look and wanted something dead simple to just play music and it’s just ok. No support for playlists which is interesting. It also has a hard limit of around 8000 songs. Their android based stuff seems popular though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_God_for_Mississippi