How do you listen to music?

[triangle]

Mostly FM radio or online stations like radioparadise.com and thatstation.net as well as youtube music. I use to stream locally at home from a squeezebox connected to the stereo but after it died I have not been motivated to find a replacement as there are so many online sources and I got tired of my personal collection.

 

[DrRoy]

A couple of times a week, I will sit and listen to one of the 400+ CD's that I accumulated over the years, often with a glass of wine. I also have about 6 hours of digital singles, and listen to them mostly while walking.

 

[Qs Laptop]

Update for me. Since I have a free 5 month trial to Amazon Prime Music HD and since I have unlimited data on my cell phone plan from US Mobile, I've been listening to Prime Music in my truck most every time I go anywhere. It's fun to find new songs that fit into one's genres.

 

[ArmchairMillionaire]

Our kids can't believe how archaic we are. They have subscriptions to Spotify and/or Pandora. You can make up playlists. Yes, we had a Pandora subscription years ago and it was fine. Yes, we know there are many streaming services, including Amazon we get with our Prime membership. We feel that buying the occasional song is cheaper than having a subscription.

Looking for ideas on supplementing our program. Ideas could be hardware or software. Thank you.

Subscriptions? Nope.
Cell-phone? Again, nope.
I have a 160Gb iPod and an older 60Gb one as well. The 160gB is for my truck and for use at w*rk. It's got about 25,000+ songs on it. I have a dozen or so playlists on it. Some only have 500 songs or so, while other playlists have over 2,000 songs. Thursdays at w*rk are "Full-Album-Thursdays" in my department so it's nice to have all my music on it. I still have over 600 CDs at home, but I only get 2 or 3 new ones a year. Back in the late '90s and early 2000s, my friends and co-w*rkers would swap CDs and flash drives so that's how I ended up with over 25,000 songs.
The 60Gb iPod only has playlists on it, due to space issues. It's primarily for the basement, the garage, and outside while doing projects. I have a speaker system in the garage as well as a little clock speaker iPod dock in the basement and a rechargeable battery powered iPod dock with speakers for outside. It sounds great in the enclosed back of the truck (it has a topper over the box) while I use the tailgate for a workbench.
We also use flash drives for DWs car and our designated road-trip vehicle. (unfortunately, our 2024 Trax will not recognize either iPod as a music source) Believe it or not, while taking road trips, we actually listen to FM radio at times, if we can find a good classic rock station, just to hear something different than what's on the playlists.

 

[Koolau]

I have perhaps 500 CDs and I listen to CDs or FM in the car and also CDs or Youtube at home. I'm pretty much stuck in the 60s, era wise.

 

[audreyh1]

Apple Music including in the car.

We also own a large library, ripped from owned CDs or via iTunes.

One nice thing in the car is that Tesla has native support for Apple Music with a big display option and all the browsing capability plus even voice commands.

In the house the same is available via AppleTV on our audio visual systems.

No need to connect an iPhone directly via cable or Bluetooth to stream directly from the phone unless you want to.

Of course all our Apple devices support Apple Music even my watch. I have quite a few playlists downloaded to my watch and listen to it via AirPods when out walking in the neighborhood without my iPhone.

 

[Fotodog]

I just bought a new car which includes Apple Car Play. I wasn’t really aware how awesome this feature is. Once your phone is connected, if you press and hold the voice button in your car it activates Siri (or you can still say “Hey Siri”) and you can do practically anything from your phone, such as listen to music, ask what’s on your calendar today, send texts or emails, find the closest gas station, etc.

I subscribe to YouTube premium since I watch a lot of content on YT, and the bonus is that YT Music is included. They have the best music library of any of the 3 or 4 services I have used in the past. Once I launch Siri, I can say “play In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel on YouTube Music” and it will play that song and other related songs. It’s a great way to learn new music that you haven’t heard before. Or, I can say “play the album Making Movies by Dire Straits on YouTube music, and I hear that album. It’s incredible.

My car requires a cable to connect my phone, and I was planning to buy a wireless Apple Play adapter (I still might buy it). But I found out that the best sound quality comes from a wired connection, second best is wireless Apple Play (or Google Play if that’s your platform), third best is Bluetooth. My new Lexus has an incredible Mark Levinson sound system and I want to take full advantage of it.

 

[RetMD21]

I recorded all sorts of CDs to FLACC and mp3 but just listen to Spotify. Either phone to headphones, phone to receiver or in the Tesla using the app.

 

[swakyaby]

In my Tesla, I used Slacker radio, then added a Tidal music subscription. Sometimes I plug in a USB drive that has a collection of favorite popular or classical music collection. At home, I have Sonos wi-fi connected speakers, so it makes it easy to play Tidal music in the house. My older 2nd car has no internet connectivity nor a USB port, but does have a great-sounding Mark Levinson sound system, so I still play CDs through its 6-CD player. Tried using bluetooth once from my iphone, using a FM radio bluetooth dongle, but the sound was too inferior, so I stick to CDs in my Lexus.

 

[Diogenes]

Most of the acronyms or brand-names in this thread are alien to me. There was copious mention of Apple products. To me, "Apple" is a quirky desktop computer with small black and white screen, with monitor and central processing unit integrated into one monolithic plastic box. I am unware of the concept of subscribing - namely, paying a recurring fee - for the privilege of accessing music... unless of course we mean season tickets to the city Philharmonic.

As for my own listening, it is on compact discs, via a conventional system (CD player, pre-amplifier, amplifier, stereo speakers). My listening-habits are almost exclusively classical, with very little in my collection from the 20th century, and nothing from the 21st.

I recall a conversation with an older former coworker, perhaps 30 years ago. "Son", he says, "you have no idea of the cool tunes that we used to listen to. It was really groovy back in the day. Now you kids just call them 'oldies' ". "Pops", I gingerly replied... "Some of the music to which I listen, was already 'old', one hundred years before your great-grandfather was in swaddling-cloth. Also, I was taught to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition".

 

[Koolau]

My Buick still plays 4-tracks. I have boxes of them that I bought from Goodwill for a quarter a piece. They will last me as long as I live (and as long as the Buick still runs.) Talk about oldies. That's basically what I have on tape and what I listen to in the car. No need to buy anything else as I'm not interested in very much that's new. (Stuck in the '60s and '70s I guess.)

 

[ERD50]

My Buick still plays 4-tracks. I have boxes of them that I bought from Goodwill for a quarter a piece. They will last me as long as I live (and as long as the Buick still runs.) Talk about oldies. That's basically what I have on tape and what I listen to in the car. No need to buy anything else as I'm not interested in very much that's new. (Stuck in the '60s and '70s I guess.)

So half of the tracks don't work? I guess it's hard to find an Eight-Track repairman these days!

Though Cassettes are actually four-track. Two for stereo in one direction, and two for stereo in the other direction, offset so that when you flip it, the proper two align with the tape head (which is two track only).

Though I do own a four-track-in-one-direction cassette recorder from the 80's - it is a mini four track recording studio ( hey, Sgt. Pepper was recorded using four-track equipment!).

 

[Koolau]

So half of the tracks don't work? I guess it's hard to find an Eight-Track repairman these days!

Though Cassettes are actually four-track. Two for stereo in one direction, and two for stereo in the other direction, offset so that when you flip it, the proper two align with the tape head (which is two track only).

Though I do own a four-track-in-one-direction cassette recorder from the 80's - it is a mini four track recording studio ( hey, Sgt. Pepper was recorded using four-track equipment!).

Two tracks at a time is all I need (since I only have two ears.)

 

[SecondAttempt]

(Free) Pandora on a Sonos smart sound bar. Occasionally (free) Spotify