Before Spotify took over, Slacker Radio was trying to change the game—and in 2010, they dropped their own hardware player to do it. This thing was like an MP3 player fused with internet radio. It streamed custom stations over Wi-Fi, no computer syncing needed, and you could cache stations for offline listening. It had a small color screen, came in 4GB or 8GB, and even let you skip songs—huge at the time. Slacker kept updating it with firmware tweaks and better station personalization, but let’s be real—it couldn’t keep up with smartphones. By 2012, it was pretty much done, but if you had one, you know how ahead of its time it felt.