You’re grossly overestimating what mobile tech was capable of in 1998. The dreamcast had enough power to play an mp3 but the VMU definitely did not. On top of that, the VMU only has enough storage space for a little over 6 seconds of music at 128kbps. Even if the Dreamcast could (very very slowly) rip CDs to MP3 , you still had no where to save the data.
You’re grossly overestimating what mobile tech was capable of in 1998. The dreamcast had enough power to play an mp3 but the VMU definitely did not. On top of that, the VMU only has enough storage space for a little over 6 seconds of music at 128kbps. Even if the Dreamcast could (very very slowly) rip CDs to MP3 , you still had no where to save the data.