How do you listen to music? Looking for ideas.

[Z3Dreamer]

I use points on credit cards to buy Apple gift cards then I use them to buy songs through Apple Store for my iTunes library. Then, I:

• creat playlists and transfer to an iPod Nano which I use for workout music and hiking music. Oh, I have Bluetooth headphones.
• replaced car stereos with $150 Kenwoods that have have USB ports. I use iTunes to rip music to thumb drives. I can connect my iPod Nano via cable or Bluetooth to the car stereo and play that music.

I have a subscription to Pandora. I use it as follows:

• I have 2 Amazon Echo's. One in the kitchen (with Bluetooth connections to speakers) and one in the garage work area. "Alexa, play Pandora Scorpions".
• I have the Pandora app on my phone. Somehow it has downloaded music from 2 of my stations to my cell phone. When I want, I can stream those stations without using data. My phone can Bluetooth connect to my car audio through Pandora app.
• When just sitting around in a room with a TV and Roku, I can stream Pandora.

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.

 

[ERD50]

...
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.

I don't understand the problem. If you ripped your LPs/CD to a hard drive, and you can point iTunes to it, it seems like you have a way to play them?

I have also ripped my LPs/CD to a hard drive. I use a variety of different media players, all included with a system or open source freeware. I rip to a lossless format (FLAC) so I can convert to anything else w/o additional conversion loss. It's easy to convert a copy to mp3 or whatever, if needed for a player that does not play FLAC natively. I do that to put some on a USB stick for the car player.

The ripping is what takes some time (especially LPs). Playing them from any modern player is easy. I'm just not following you.

-ERD50

 

[Jerry1]

I ripped all of my CD’s and put the files on my phone and a usb drive. Both connect in my car. Honestly though, I gravitate to Pandora. I also have Amazon Prime. I have started using the more but primarily at home. I have a Bose sound bar on my TV with Bluetooth so I connect it to my iPad and listen to Amazon music through it. Of course I can listen to Pandora as well, but Amazon music is different in tha I can select an album and listen to it. I like that. Generally though, I’m close to agreeing to your last statement - it is close to giving up on the older media (cd’s).

 

[Oz investor]

try these

these are independent artists you may have to listen to a lot of tracks to find the ones you like

https://www.jamendo.com/start

 

[Music Lover]

My music has been ripped to my computer and when at home can listen to it through the stereo, deck speakers, and/or speakers in the garage. I also have a flash drive of music in the car, and music on my phone which can be linked to any Bluetooth device.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

I don't understand the problem. If you ripped your LPs/CD to a hard drive, and you can point iTunes to it, it seems like you have a way to play them?

-ERD50

Problem is that I am not that good at iTunes. I end up with 5 copies of many, many songs, because I have to re-point to the NAS every time I go back in. 4 of the copies are grayed out. iTunes wants me to delete the duplicates one at a time. I know, you never have this problem.

 

[ERD50]

Problem is that I am not that good at iTunes. I end up with 5 copies of many, many songs, because I have to re-point to the NAS every time I go back in. 4 of the copies are grayed out. iTunes wants me to delete the duplicates one at a time. I know, you never have this problem.

I don't use iTunes, so no, never had this problem, and I can't help you.

But if you want help, give the specific problem (duplicates showing up in iTunes when you connect an external drive with music files), there might be an easy solution. Your 'problem' has nothing to do with the songs originally being on LP/CD, they are just files.

-ERD50

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

A bunch of years ago, I spent a week with 4 CD's attached to a computer ripping CD's to flac format. I have a nano usb in my vehicle with over 9000 songs on it. I also uploaded them to google music and Apple iCloud music.

Having said that, a year ago I signed up for Apple music and use this as a source for things I don't have (as well as my DC's music, most of which he downloads to his iPhone). I have found that I've become too lazy to carry a bunch of CD's (or DVD's for that matter), and would rather either play them from usb or stream it.

 

[aaronc879]

This thread is already showing how behind I am in new technology. I don't know how to do any of the stuff you guys are talking about. I can get almost any song I want to listen to at home for free on Youtube. Just hook my computer up to the tv and listen to it thru the tv. Plenty loud. In the car i'm fine with the local radio choices, also free.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

I don't use iTunes, so no, never had this problem, and I can't help you.

But if you want help, give the specific problem (duplicates showing up in iTunes when you connect an external drive with music files), there might be an easy solution. Your 'problem' has nothing to do with the songs originally being on LP/CD, they are just files.

-ERD50

iTunes will allow you to delete one track at a time. There are cleaners and maybe I will explore, but again, I find iTunes too cumbersome to use for my vast library of songs.

Enough of iTunes. How do you manage songs, create playlists and the like? Are you a Plex kind of person?

 

[W2R]

Can't help with iTunes or Pandora.

This thread is already showing how behind I am in new technology. I don't know how to do any of the stuff you guys are talking about. I can get almost any song I want to listen to at home for free on Youtube. Just hook my computer up to the tv and listen to it thru the tv. Plenty loud. In the car i'm fine with the local radio choices, also free.

+1, except that I don't bother to hook up my computer to the TV.

I don't listen to much music, perhaps 1-2 songs/day and I listen to them on youtube here at home.

Frank listens to much more, using his Sandisk mp3 player.

 

[Music Lover]

This thread is already showing how behind I am in new technology. I don't know how to do any of the stuff you guys are talking about. I can get almost any song I want to listen to at home for free on Youtube. Just hook my computer up to the tv and listen to it thru the tv. Plenty loud. In the car i'm fine with the local radio choices, also free.

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.

 

[Doribe]

I'm behind in this area. I'm basically in the same place as aaronc879. I want to get current. If I buy Amazon Echo, can I just tell it to play a song (I do have Amazon Prime and a free Pandora subscription)? Does the tv or roku have to be on? Does the Echo connect to my wi-fi?

 

[aaronc879]

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.

You can listen to full cd's or even greatest hits of an artist. Those can last for a couple hours.

 

[ERD50]

iTunes will allow you to delete one track at a time. There are cleaners and maybe I will explore, but again, I find iTunes too cumbersome to use for my vast library of songs.

Enough of iTunes. How do you manage songs, create playlists and the like? Are you a Plex kind of person?

I use Rhythmbox, but it is Linux/Unix only. Most of my playlists are 'smart' - I have taken some time to add specific 'genre' labels, and I can use those to create what I need. For Christmas music, I tag the genre column with things like *CMAS, *Instr (Instrumental), *Serious (generally the serious, religious ones), *Jaunty (fun, bright tunes), *Mellow, etc. A smart playlist made of "this AND this", or "this and NOT this" workks really well for me

I also use VLC, which is cross platform (Win/Mac/Linux), but I have not set up playlists on that - read the docs for details on how to do that. I'm sure they have smart playlists as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmbox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

-ERD50

 

[Music Lover]

You can listen to full cd's or even greatest hits of an artist. Those can last for a couple hours.

Good point...I forgot about that.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

I'm behind in this area. I'm basically in the same place as aaronc879. I want to get current. If I buy Amazon Echo, can I just tell it to play a song (I do have Amazon Prime and a free Pandora subscription)? Does the tv or roku have to be on? Does the Echo connect to my wi-fi?

Amazon Echo connects to your wifi. For setup, you must use an app on your phone, but once setup, no need to involve your phone You can connect your Pandora or not. I initially struggled with setting up skills and the like. Some must be done on the phone. Others through your Amazon account on PC. Maybe they have made it easier.

You then activate the Echo by saying "Alexa" and ask her to do something. For example, I just said "Alexa, play classic rock" and she said "Here is a station for classic rock" and now I am listening to various classic rock songs. "Alexa, play funk" worked too. This is all through Amazon Music which you get through Amazon Prime.

Once you sync your Pandora account you can say "Alexa, play Pandora Scorpions" to get your Scorpions station. Or whatever station you want. No need to have TV or Roku on.

 

[txtig]

I use Pandora almost exclusively, both at home and on the road. My Pandora account has about 100 stations reflecting my somewhat obscure musical tastes. I like that the Pandora stations will play not only the artist selected, but similar artists that I may not yet have been exposed to. I just ditched my pricy SiriusXM subscriptions in both of my vehicles and now stream Pandora via Bluetooth. I use a Roav Viva device in the cars to give me Alexa capabilities. So, easy to change stations by just talking to the device.

 

[RunningBum]

I have about 25GB of music, much of it from CDs that I converted to digital, the rest of it purchased digitally.

I have a folder for each CD, and a folder for each artist that contains all CDs by the artist. I also have a singles folder for artists I just bought one or two tracks of, so that I don't have a gazillion artist folders.

Then I have folders for various genres, whatever makes sense for you. I have many shades of rock, while others might have multiples of country, jazz, whatever. I put the artist folders in one of those genres, unless I have so much of an artist and like them so much I just keep them as their own genre, so to speak. So, my main music folder has, for example:
- Soft rock
- Hard rock
- Classical
- Christmas
- Pink Floyd
etc

For my car, I don't want to sort through too much, so I just copied over the full CDs I want to listen to, and a few folders of single stuff by genre. Basically those folders are playlists. Those singles come from both stuff I've purchased, and also from CDs where I only like a song or two. I have a lot of CDs like that.

I also made some specific playlists for running that I put on an mp3 player I run with. I also put a few full CDs on it, but not nearly as many as I have in my car. I use that player for travel too. Often I'll connect it to my home stereo too.

So I guess I don't understand the issue. I treat my converted CD collection just like my purchased music. Just like I selected singles or full albums from Amazon (or iTunes) for my library, I select singles or full albums from my CD collection for my library. My library being whatever media I want to store music on to play from.

I don't use Alexa and I don't use iTunes. I just have my music organized so I can browse and select what I want to hear. If I want to hear soft rock, I'll select that folder and randomize.

If I wanted to get exposed to more music I'd get Sirius or Pandora, but mostly I'm happy with my collection and if I hear something I like from a movie, TV show, from a friend, or listening on the radio, I'll find it and buy it.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

For the most part, I use Amazon music. I once upon a time burned all my CDs onto a HD and made a couple of flashdrives that I use in the car(s). Still have a number of LPs that I haven't figured out what to with yet.

No folders, no genre sorting. All shuffle, all the time.

At one time I had an iPod Nano (had a special adapter in the car) but I hated that stupid thing and I *really* hated the iTunes store...for Apple supposedly being such a "user friendly" ecosystem, I found it to be a HUGE pain in my arse.

 

[Bir48die]

During the Napster days I er uh "borrowed" a considerable amount of music. I burned eight trillion CD's. They are collecting dust now. Have almost all in duplicate form (see previous poster) on ITunes.

Had Pandora for a long time. Dumped them and went to Spotify. I find them better on listening to individual bands. Have Bluetooth headphones and they are on my head a couple hours a day, especially during workouts or menial tasks outside at home.

Have an Echo and run through surround sound upstairs and out on the back deck. Same with downstairs.

Also have a portable speaker for the golf course as we now rock out while playing at the club.

 

[f35phixer]

Free Pandora and I heart Music. I like because you can make a artist a fav and then it will play others of that type, Gary Allen right now and there is Jamey johnson YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT IN COLOR, one of my fav songs !!!!!!!!!!!! Also have all my CDs burned to Iphone, good for when i walk down to check the crab pots and listen with no data charge ;-))

 

[Cobra9777]

I posted this a few months ago on a similar thread, so I'll just quote it here:

I gave up on the whole concept of "owning" music about 10 years ago. I have a huge CD collection, but honestly, I'm bored with it. I crave new music... and there's plenty of it. But it takes some effort to find stuff I like. And I don't just mean new releases. There's plenty of music from the past that is "new to me."

I subscribe to Tidal lossless and I also use the free version of Pandora. I put a ton of effort into configuring and maintaining my "stations" on Pandora. I also use the thumbs up/down as frequently as possible so the system learns what I like. Pandora gets a lot of use in my workshop and in the car. But for serious listening, I use Tidal lossless on my home system, often with new music I discovered on Pandora. Tidal's suggestions are getting quite good as well, especially brand new releases that I might like.

 

[bloom2708]

We gave up on buying songs and trying to play ripped music.

$14.99/month for a Family subscription to Apple Music. 6 people share (5 in my family and my parents is #6).

The kids purchased more songs than that each month and then wanted something else.

Now we have virtually all music (I'm sure there are exceptions) and just listen based on artist, specific album or a "radio" station based on an artist or song.

I still have a hard drive with 200GB of music and maybe 25 CDs in a pile. I don't know a scenario where I would go back.

 

[Scuba]

DH is a Spotify convert. He absolutely loves it. He also has PLEX although he is the technical one in the family and I’m not sure what PLEX does for us. He pays $10/month for Spotify and $5/month for PLEX.