Its obviously not the best, I know. I listen to plenty of vinyl when I can, but there are times when its not so available or convenient. I also did plenty of CD buying at some points in my life and have a trove of music in that format. So what are the options? Here's my wants:

* NOT my phone. Nothing that beeps for emails or texts or that my boss can call me on.
* Moveable? We have two stereos setup in our place, living room and work room.

Is the answer just a tablet or an old phone? Is there some more useful cool option that I dont know about?

Related side topic: Streaming things? How are we listening to things that we dont own (yet)? I have never Spotifyed a thing in my life. Is that the evil unavoidable answer or is there a better one?

For serious listening (ie not just a bluetooth speaker on the porch or whatever) I run my MacBook Air > usb DAC (pretty decent thing I found on Audiogon, but not too overboard) > normal stereo.

I have streamed both Bandcamp and Spotify stuff into this setup. Admittedly the paid version of Spotify has higher quality streaming.

I have a cheapo bluetooth receiver hooked up to the old stereo that works quite well.
I mostly use it to stream WFMU from my phone because the FM reception at the new crib sucks.
The bluetooth connection is relatively solid, though it's sometimes slightly finicky when connecting.

I use the Radiogram app to stream radio and it loves to frequently just stop altogether. It's maddening. I haven't found any other FM streaming app that doesn't do this. This cockamamie set-up I have is mostly livable but it has absolutely nothing on FM radio. I have occasionally streamed live radio from far-off lands and that is pretty cool, so I guess that's what digital offers.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you when it comes to Spotify. But I discovered that the Bandcamp app on my phone lets me stream everything I've ever bought through Bandcamp which is super cool. I have streamed free stuff on Soundcloud before as well.

I have an Android phone for some reason and I remain baffled and ignorant as to how I should best use and maintain a music library on this thing.

I'm using an old Chromecast Audio to cast Tidal to my hi-fi. The DACs on these are decent and the digital outputs measure "bit perfect" if you want to feed a higher-quality external DAC.

Prices on them have shot up since they were discontinued (~$80 on ebay, I paid $15 new about 6 years ago when google was blowing them out).

I canceled my spotify account a couple of years ago for a number of reasons. The $10/mo version of Tidal sounds better to me, and they pay artists better than spotify.

Last summer I had it set up so I could access my music library through Foobar 2000 on my phone as long as my PC was turned on and logged in. I could use the multitude of bluetooth receivers around the house and garage to listen anywhere. It got a little buggy when we got a new router and I haven't set it back up. Worked pretty well though. 90% of the time I just use spotify because my job pays for it and it has most of what i want to listen to these days. Raspberry Pi and Kodi is another good way to create a music library, I can access the same PC tower in the basement and listen through my TV is I'm feeling basic.

I haven't researched in a while, so there may be better options at this point, but Sonos is what I use for all digital listening at the house and when traveling. They make super high end shit for home theater as well as little portable bluetooth style speakers that sound as good as I've heard. They all work basically the same, so you can buy one or two of the little ones for wi-fi streaming, then from there you can use existing apple/Spotify accounts, access all yr bandcamp shit, create your own playlists, get yr podcast fix on, etc. As you add components to the overall system, the integration is really easy and intuitive, unlike a lot of the others friends have. The benefit of this is that it's streaming from your digital services directly to the speakers, so you're not using your phone or tablet as the "player" for the music. You can leave your house and it'll keep streaming whatever you put on. People you share your home with may love or hate this lol. You can also cast or play directly from your phone as an option.

My turntable has its own set of non sonos speakers wired directly to an amp that can be run independently or with the rest of the sonos system integrated depending on where I am in the house.

Added bonus is when you have peeps over they can access your system and you can let them control shit (or not) and make shared playlists from each others accounts very easily, which is cool for when you want to play something new for someone or they want to play something for you.

Cons: the EQ sucks, but they all do. On the expensive side, but you can start small and add to them as you go. If you live in a city with any substantial cellular/wi-fi density, you have to tinker with the wi-fi and wired settings a bit to get it right, but once you do it's nailed up - NY probably has this issue but also probably has easy solutions.

My wife bought a Sonos port and two speaker setup a couple years ago so we could have speakers in our kitchen and not blow out the volume in our living room. We've got it configured so the phono preamp also runs through it so we can listen to vinyl through those speakers, or select from Bandcamp/Tidal/streaming radio via the Sonos app. Works fine for our usage for sure!

We do the same thing as Chris, 3 different Sonos speakers (a 4th soon), for any not "serious" listening; cooking, while we work, etc. I like sonos for this specific purpose, I often put on some college radio station, radio nope, or whatever and just let it play. We have a spotify account paid through work, we treat it as a radio and honestly, found a lot of albums to purchase this way.

Chromecast audio for me. Mine are just analog into various free-to-me stereo receivers, but I've got one in the living room, one in the kitchen and one feeding speakers in the back yard. Google home allows them to be set up in groups so I can stream to one, some or all. Nice on grilling days to keep the tunes consistent while walking in and out a bunch.

Chromecast audio is the best thing google ever discontinued.

I had a Lindell audio DAC-X that I snagged for $200 that I kinda regret selling, but it was big and the profit was too good to not flip. There's a me in another universe listening to shitty mp3s through that thing and fucking living it up.

99% of the music I listen to at home is analog, on my turntable.

The remaining 1% is digital, and... as much as it pains for me to say... involves the following:

My wife or me saying: "Alexa, play xxx radio on Pandora". And said playback is through an Amazon Echo device.

The most digital music I listen to, by far, is in my car. iPhone -> bluetooth -> car -> car speakers. I don't have any special equipment for this aside from whatever is stock on a 2016 Honda HR-V.