arsvita Car Audio Cassette to Aux Adapter, 3.5 MM Auxillary Cable Tape Adapter

Circa 2001 or so, I got a portable CD player for Christmas that could also play MP3s, which was just about the coolest thing ever at the time. Now instead of the normal 12-13 songs a CD could hold when converted to WAV, I could hold 100-200 songs in mp3 form on a 700mb CD burned as a data disc rather than an audio disc.

This was then supplemented in the car with a cassette tape adapter that included an audio jack. [0] It was pretty sweet, all things considered. Tape decks started to vanish from cars at about that time, and those Bluetooth adapters that would plug into the cigarette slot and broadcast on a radio frequency were really crap compared to the direct jack. I would argue I didn't get that same level of ease+fidelity of pushing MP3s to my car stereo until I directly installed a Bluetooth stereo into my car 15-ish years later.

[0] example: https://www.amazon.com/Arsvita-Audio-Cassette-Adapter-Auxill...

I had a car with just a tape deck. This turns out to be all you want.

I went through two phases:

1. I ordered some type of Walkman-like car kit that came with a portable CD player, glue strips to adhere the CD player to your dashboard, and a cassette tape adapter that plugged into an aux port (on the CD player) and inserted into the tape deck. I'd burn CDs to play in the car that way.

2. I got a Zen Stone, a tiny mp3 player with no screen that was easy to operate by feel. I stored mp3s on it... and plugged the cassette adapter that I still had into it. That was as good as in-car music can get without being voice operated.

They still make the adapters: https://www.amazon.com/Arsvita-Audio-Cassette-Adapter-Auxill...