How do you listen to music? Looking for ideas.

[CoolRich59]

Sonos and Spotify.

I have a Sonos Play 5 in my study and another in the kitchen; a Sonos connection to my NAD amplifier and Golden Ear speakers in the living room; and I have a Set of Sonos Play 1s, subwoofer and playbar synched together as a home theater sound system.

I have my iTunes library (100GB+) connected to Sonos, but these days stream Spotify almost exclusively.

 

[DrRoy]

I do a mix. Play the old CD's. Pandora. Itunes. Memory stick with digital singles.

 

[COcheesehead]

We have a Sonos system in our house and stream Pandora or access our iTunes library through it.

 

[Dawg52]

At home I listen to most music through youtube. Sometimes Comcast's music on demand. I have a receiver and JBL speakers as my soundbar. On the road I have all my cd's ripped to an mp3 player and play through car speakers. Also have a wireless speaker at my coastal condo for use with the mp3 player.

 

[Just_Steve]

P2P music sharing.

 

[John Galt III]

Retro and Luddite here. I listen to a stereo record player (vinyl) of old records when at home. Also a cassette player now and then. In my car I have one cd in all the time, a classical collection. Also FM radio when in car. And whenever I can, I attend student musical recitals at local colleges, for free. The students are often exceptionally talented, and it's live! I also attend a lot of outdoor music festivals.

 

[Denverite]

YouTube is great for finding songs...but, you're picking one song at a time. That doesn't work if I'm puttering around in the garage or relaxing on the deck.

In addition to the music stored on my computer I sometimes listen to Stingray which is part of my cable package. No commercials and formats for all tastes.

YouTube also offers videos with lengthy music material within a given genre. Jazz, 80s rock, etc. I used to listen to a YouTube jazz video at work that played for six hours. They did cut in an occasional commercial (which can sometimes be shortened by clicking the "Skip Ad" button) but still much better than terrestrial radio. And free.

I'm also wondering about the return of vinyl records - they are now stocking them at Best Buy here in Denver. Can the average listener discern the difference discussed in this article?

https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/is-the-sound-on-vinyl-records-better-than-on-cds-or-dvds.htm

 

[imoldernu]

Loaded 200 of my favorites to Alexa during the "free" days. Still there.

'I heart Bach" or "I heart Mozart", (free) "volume 6"... for sleeping.

My 3000 Napster songs rest, unheard on the 2T hard drive.

Last "modern" music that I listened to was Elvis Presley and Karen Carpenter.

Burning question... after watching a few seconds of current popular music...
"How does anyone hear, understand, or learn the words?

 

[bltkmt]

Sonos and Spotify.

I have a Sonos Play 5 in my study and another in the kitchen; a Sonos connection to my NAD amplifier and Golden Ear speakers in the living room; and I have a Set of Sonos Play 1s, subwoofer and playbar synched together as a home theater sound system.

I have my iTunes library (100GB+) connected to Sonos, but these days stream Spotify almost exclusively.

This is pretty much how I do it as well. Sonos is wonderful.

 

[Souschef]

I used to use Amazon Music when I would rip my CD's to my library on my Hard Drive then upload them from there. Recently I tried Amazon Music and it looks for a CD drive that does not exist WTF??

 

[Tractor guy]

I used to be really into music, now not so much and my spouse couldn't care less. For background music in the house, I have an old Logitech Squeezebox and have the "station" presets set to stream BBC2, a classic rock station, and a blues station. I am apparently one of the few people who has been able to make it work consistently. Its unreliability and difficulty setting it up is why it didn't ever make it big.

I also have a large library of songs I've ripped to mp3 that I manage with Itunes and store on my PC. I use the smart playlist feature of Itunes, which is why I haven't replaced it with something else. My preferred smart list plays songs that I haven't marked as disliked and that I haven't played in a month. My goal is to avoid hearing the same stuff all the time and this does it for me.

I use Isync to download the same 8 gByte playlist from my PC to my android phone about every other month or so. This is what I use when I don't want to listen to public radio in the car. Isync uploads the play count before it does the download so it automatically removes everything I've listened to since the last download and replaces it with something new.

I also uploaded my music to Google Play Music and bought a couple of $25.00 Chrome music players. One is connected to an old Bose Ipod dock in the living room, and the other is connected to an input on my Onkyo home theater system in the family room. I stream music from Google Play Music from either my PC or my phone to either the family room or both speaker systems if I want music in the whole house for a party or whatever.

I've heard good things about Sonos but the chrome music players let me play music through my old sound systems for a heck of a lot less money than the cost of replacing them with a multi room Sonos system. They were remarkably easy to set up and work very well.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

At home - youtube.
Train - iPod with free music downloads from the library (Freegal).
Car - just regular radio, though sometimes I use the iPod for songs and audio books (also free from the library) for longer car rides.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

And whenever I can, I attend student musical recitals at local colleges, for free. The students are often exceptionally talented, and it's live! I also attend a lot of outdoor music festivals.

We like going out for live music, too. Tonight we just got home from a college production of the musical Evita with a full student cast and orchestra. We were blown away at how professional it was. It wasn't free but it was $10 for seniors. We're also big fans free outdoor concerts in the parks. Last night we saw The Weight Band (derivative group from The Band, played all of The Band's hits) at a small club in Oakland.

 

[WestUniversity]

I have a free Pandora account, an Amazon Music account thanks to our Prime membership, a paid subscription for Slacker Radio and if all else fails about 3,500 songs synced into my iPhone. I use an app to rip my music to MP3’s and I squeeze them down ever so slightly. I don’t notice any loss in audio quality and they take up much less space. I have a Bluetooth system in my backyard and a WiFi system in my house and of course Bluetooth in the car...

 

[My Dream]

NuVo Grand Concerto and Spotify Premium


NuVo in 7 rooms and usb in car. I went NuVo rather than Sonos only because I wanted hardwired rather than wifi with keypads. Maybe Sonos have keypads now?

 

[target2019]

Here is what is not so successful. I, like you, have a bunch of LP's and CD's. I ripped/copied them to my NAS. They take up 100GB of space. Have not had the motivation to find a way to use them. Seems like I point iTunes to it and I guess it is available. Should I just give up on this ancient form of music?

Any easier/better ways to listen to music? My preference would be for solutions that don't take a lot of time or money.

If you want "easy" then I suppose a paid streaming service will get you there. The app on each device will let you control your listening environment.

1) Every once in a while, I open Spotify (with commercials), and listen a bit. This is at home, and it is a change of pace.
2) I added VLC Player to my PC, and have a few streams I prefer, like WXPN. That is music radio, and it may not fit your exact question.
3) Have an old ipod shuffle at work. I do load it up with music from time to time, but even better it has FM radio. I usually load a smart playlist to fill it up, every couple of months.
4) My legacy library, yes from Napster and many CDs, is in itunes. The ancient XP PC that holds it is in my home office. Today I will probably open it, and go random. Or maybe call up one of my smart lists.
For the home library, it is much simpler to turn on the pc, rather than play back through other devices in the home. Every once in a while I buy a CD from Amazon, and add the mp3's to this library.

There are quite a few stations on Comcast, and to be honest, have never tried one. Probably should investigate. I probably have Prime music, but never touched the stuff (yet). Premium services are just not something I want/need right now.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

OP here. Thanks for your responses. I do have streaming (Pandora). I do have ipod/itunes. I have ripped itunes music to a flash drive for use in my cars. I use these 3 every day.

I have also taken the time to rip many CDs/LPs to a Network Attached Storage. NAS is getting old. I do have backups. I don't really use that music. Some day when I am not motivated to do anything else, I will probably develop playlists for that music using some of the methods you guys have described.

 

[nphx]

i have youtube red so i can open an artist or genre and let it roll. Smart tv's are are so inexpensive now my garage has a 55".

 

[Kwirk]

We have a library of ripped CD's on a home media center computer (backed up to OneDrive and to a portable hard drive). We also have smaller libraries of ripped CD's on each of our phones. The smaller phone libraries and a Plex ($40/yr) connection to the larger media center library give us access to our CD's from almost any place with an internet or phone data connection.

But, we primarily listen to music while driving. We most frequently use a low-level SiriusXM ($14/mo) subscription, just because it's easy. When we get tired of the SiriusXM offerings, we use a phone blue tooth connection for access to the CD library. MusicChoice (part of our FiOS subscription accessed via iPhone app) is available for additional variety.

When we have the grandkids to entertain we make heavy use of YouTube for music (and videos). "Play Star Wars Imperial March, Pop Pop."

 

[albireo13]

I use a Sonos system in our house and stream mostly Pandora.
I couldn't be bothered ripping all my CDs. I don't have that much free time.
Maybe when I retire. LOL

 

[Souschef]

At home DW listens to Pandora on her tablet plugged into two tiny speakers. On the road (she does the driving, it is much quieter that way) she has Pandora on her smartphone linked through Bluetooth to the Bose sound system in her new Mazda CX-5
Her last car was a '98 Cadillac with a cassette player. What a quantum leap!

 

[RunningBum]

Her last car was a '98 Cadillac with a cassette player. What a quantum leap!

Ha! I have a 97 Miata that had a cassette player. I kept thinking to upgrade it, but it seemed like most options were ~$200, and how much longer will this thing keep running? Finally this year I found a headunit with FM radio and USB and SD Slots for about $45 including adapter. I was afraid I'd doomed the car for a breakdown but it's made it so far. Speakers aren't very good, but I almost always drive with the top down so it hardly matters.