Re: your statement "Overall I applaud Koss on this step in the right direction for headphone technology."
I don't see this as the "right" direction for headphone technology, as cheep local storage makes having a massive amount of high bit rate music in your pocket very affordable. 16 GB micro SDHC cards are under $10.
The best thing about the STRIVA system is surfing Internet radio. The randomness, you get a thin layer of choice in genre but then you're surfing through thousands of stations. It's that randomness that has an fun and addictive quality. You want to check out more stations, you want to hear what's next after hearing a song you hadn't heard in a long time or discovered a brand new song.
As for comparing it to storage...
There are two vehicles for mobile infotainment -
brought in or
beamed in. This is a beamed in solution. You may prefer
brought in, but it's just a different vehicle. It's like... a pickup truck isn't a good option when what you want is a motorcycle.