How do ya'll listen to music, while on the go, in Q4 2014 (FM, Aux IN, other)

JectWonJectWon (@_@) 1,654 Posts
edited November 2014 in Strut Central
CrabMongerFunk's poast of that Taylor Swift debauchery made me curious. And, I'm not hattin'; I'm genuinely interested in getting an idea of this:

How are yall listening to music now as you go about your day?

Is anyone here honestly listening to FM radio and being like "damn, they are playing THIS song again?!?" and then angrily sitting through it or scanning for another station?

Thanks to the internet being on absolutely everything these days, I can't remember the last time I had to listen to [em]anything[/em] I don't enjoy (for better or worse...I think it's making me too quick to dismiss shit). If I'm listening to FM radio music it's because my wife has commandeered the car stereo.

Personally, I listen to almost everything via my phone (in the car = phone connected via aux in). Pretty much any music suggested on various soulstrut threads is bookmarked and listened to (I could pretty much live off those alone) and the rest is heard off of the occasional Pandora listen, my own library of tunes, niche mixes beats from friends, grooveshark, etc etc.

I think this has been discussed before on SS but the avenues seem to change enough to merit a revisit.

What do yall use for tunes when you're out and about?

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  • in the morning i ususally listen to local rock radio (Halifax Q104.3FM) or soometimes i'll check out local university stations (CKDU) but a few months ago i bought a new car VW Golf GTI, that fuckin beast has a SD card slot in it that is how i listen to most of my music now in the car a 16gb card does the trick, but it also has a 6 disc CD changer that is also full..

    if i am out in my "Art Shed" working on art at home i have a portable bluetooth speaker that i interface with my ipod5 to listen to music -but i have a boombox out there to play cassettes as well as the radio, when i am home and in the house it doesnt matter to me what the format, cassette, vinyl, CD or sometimes we'll check out some odd internet radio station on the TV and play that...

    after being together for 18yrs or so the wife is getting tired of music constantly playing in the house now and although she has damn good taste in music i find her listening to pop radio alot - for the most part i dont mind until i have to hear it as well... lol

  • asstroasstro 1,754 Posts
    I am on some kind of streaming service most of the day, either on the computer in my office or via my iPhone while commuting. Spotify, Mixcloud, etc have totally changed the way I consume music outside of my vinyl collection. I rarely even use my 100+GB iTunes collection anymore, I have a lot of music on there that isn't on Spotify or whatever but if I want to hear something specific like that I can usually wait until I get home and spin the record. Meanwhile I have been able to discover a ton of music I wouldn't have heard otherwise because it's so easy to sample new stuff.

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,095 Posts
    cds, rekkids and mp3s on phone (via jambox) at home.

    mp3s on phone and Sirius in the car.

    mp3s on phone when wandering.

    wife listens to songza at home sometimes.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    I am disconnected.
    At work, in the front of the house, I listen to records.
    I will also listen, briefly, to youtube, soulstrut or facebook suggestions.
    Back of the house I have cds or public radio on a circa 1990 Sony boombox that does just fine. My cd collection is small.
    In the car it's FM radio, npr or the jazz station.
    I have an ipod with no music. I use it for internet when I travel.
    I have another early ipod with music. I built a little dock with computer speakers. But the quality of the files/playback irritates me.
    I rarely hear new music. I listened to 30secs of that Taylor Swift song yesterday. I hope to never hear it again.
    I did hear Happy and love it. I also try to listen to stuff like new Beyonce when you guys recommend. But I am rarely in a situation where I am forced to listen to anything like top 40.

  • In the car it's CD-R's but can't listen to the same one for more than a week before going insane. I need to get some kind of adapter installed in my '05 accord to get AUX and my life would be soso much better but it also requires me to take apart some of the shit next to the stereo and I ain't that great with cars.

  • parallaxparallax no-style-having mf'er 1,266 Posts
    In the car, it's a USB stick with 120 x 30 minute mixes that I've made over the years. I generally lose interest in mixes that go beyond 30 mins. The mixes cover everything from soul, funk, braekbeat fast and raer, disco, hiphop, house music, dnb, dubstep, library, latin, etc. The mixes are usually open format but beat-matched and programmed such that there is a progression in mood and pace. It's more than a sloppy playlist, but less than a full-on, edited with voiceovers/movie clips and effects type deal.

    At home, I throw on records, primarily for my daughter. Otherwise I'm listening to music on my phone. At work, I have a portable and will throw records on now and again. I also have a Bluetooth speaker that I'll connect my phone to if I want to hear a mix via home-based cloud.

    I haven't listened to the radio in years and actually feel quite disconnected to what the kids are jamming to. It feels strange to think that I'm a music nut, and then not know many of the SNL featured bands, like St. Vincent (who are awful imo). Way too many commercials on radio anyway, and again, not feeling 95% of the music. #getoffmylawn

  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,779 Posts
    Sadly enough I rarely have time to listen to records any more.

    In the morning on my way to work I either listen to the MP3 jukebox on my car system (has an SD card slot) or I listen to Howard on Satellite.

    At work, I have a 1 TB hard drive and listen to playlists in iTunes.

    At home, stream bluetooth to my Bose speaker.

  • parallaxparallax no-style-having mf'er 1,266 Posts
    RAJ said:
    At home, stream bluetooth to my Bose speaker.

    Is Bose legit? I've wondered about getting one.

  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    Had a trail for SiriusXM that I let run its course, like today, and am evermore debating paying for Spotify. As of now, it's an AUX'd 160-gig iPod classic that I purchased on the day they removed the device from the Apple website - and one that was supposed to be an insurance policy for my old trusty 120-gig classic that I accidentally dropped down an elevator shaft a few weeks ago. Mostly just blazing footwork and trying to get my hands on some good chiptune, occasionally dabbling in sports talk radio that I can only hang with in 10-minute increments, or NPR, the local hip-hop station (Power 92), the R&B-cum-classics channel (V-103) or classical (WFMT). I can't hang with the touch screen of a smart phone in the car - too much to look at in order to find a song a like, so I like to rely on the click wheel while I'm steering. There's two classic rock channels here, the Loop and the Drive, both of which have run way too heavy on Wall-era Floyd since, well, probably since Momentarily Lapse of Reason, and it's funny that after hearing "Comfortably Numb" for the umpteenth time, the reaction is opposite.

  • FrankFrank 2,370 Posts
    I never listen to music "on the go". Actually I try and avoid having to listen to any sort of background music at any time. First thing I do when entering a cab is to ask the driver to turn off the radio. I can't even count the restaurants that I stopped visiting because I was tired listening to their music. I'd never listen to music through earplugs. For the most part, I either sit down in our music/movie room and listen to exactly what I want to hear or I don't want to hear any music at all. I even stopped listening to music in my car (whenever I have one) about 20 years ago as I began dj-ing at least once and often 4, 5 or even 6 times a week. When we go on long road trips I usually prepare a bunch of CDs and mixes that I dump onto my wife's iPod (I don't own such a thing myself) but usually we just spend the time talking most of the time... at home I use one of those TDK boomboxes to listen to music outside of the music room:



    Pretty damn loud... I hook it up to my laptop to play (mostly stolen) mp3s. This is pretty much a replacement for my old music cassette boombox. I use this set-up every day in the gym where I play loud and noisy shit and don't care at all about fidelity and very infrequently on the terrace or in the garden, for the most part only when our neighbor feels like blessing us with his Best of Bob Marley compilation... usually all it takes is one or two Slayer albums and he's off the air. He hasn't brought out Bob in at least a year or so...

  • Big_StacksBig_Stacks "I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
    Hey,

    I listen to CDs and CD-Rs on the way to work. If traveling, then I take an iPod on the flight stocked with mixes and other classic material. At work, I listen to streaming jazz radio stations or mp3s of mixes. Occasionally, I bring in jazz or folks CDs to enjoy as I work.

    Peace,

    Big Stacks from Kakalak

  • parallax said:
    RAJ said:
    At home, stream bluetooth to my Bose speaker.

    Is Bose legit? I've wondered about getting one.

    I have one. For what it is it's great. That and my phone is all I need at wrk.

    In the truck it's a 32 gig usb. At home it's records.

  • 8gb iPod Nano in the car via FM transmitter (no Aux and it's a leased car so I'm not about to go switching the stereo in it any time soon). It has a dash-mounted CD too, so I've been getting quite into picking up loads of CDs for a few quid (including postage) on Amazon marketplace. It's about a 50-50 split of albums I own on vinyl already and others that I never got around to picking up before

  • JectWonJectWon (@_@) 1,654 Posts
    EDIT: wrong thread...

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,885 Posts
    Convenience rules at the moment.

    My records (and CDs, come to think of it) are currently archived at my folks place. I was never a collector or dealer; the records I have were because I just wanted to listen to the music on them.

    I don't currently own a working deck nor have the room for it. The kids would wreck it. Like I did my dad's Dynatron. I never put the radio on anywhere. There is plenty of knowledge dropped on The Strut; every day a school day.

    Got a 2TB at home full of mp3s and a 1TB at work with a "Best of the 2TB" on it. Got 32GB in the car on a USB to sort the "New stuff". Although on this gig, I can't listen to anything at work as I have to be seen to be "Busy". And no-one can be busy if they are listening to music, right? :/

    At home, it can be streamed through the Cambridge Audio 5:1 via a Popcorn Hour, or any networked device upstairs. I have a big Bluetooth speaker up there that can make a decent fist of it if needed.

    I put a decent "System" in the car, with deep, clear bass. It's like sticking your noggin between two colliding submarines.

    I do buy music, last thing was TomO's EP.

    As for the Vinyl vs. Digital "Sound Off", I am happy with decent-quality rips through decent in-ear headphones.

  • CBearCBear 902 Posts
    Home - Records or MP3s. I have vintage systems throughout the house hooked up to Airport Expresses so I can control them all from my phone or laptop. I usually listen to records in the morning before my wife wakes.

    Bicycle - MP3s on my phone through earbuds

    Car - MP3s via phone through the aux in

    Work - MP3's via phone through an old Kenwood and then into some over-ear headphones.

    I don't listen to anything streaming. I'm always editing my records and MP3s to keep the collection tidy and current. Any records I can't listen to all the way through get put in the "to sell" bin, and any MP3s I don't like get a 1-star on the ratings and then deleted when I sync my phone again.

  • HOME - records or CDs

    OUT AND ABOUT - iPod, always on shuffle.

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,778 Posts

    WTF is Q4?

  • Duderonomy said:

    WTF is Q4?

    x2

  • JectWonJectWon (@_@) 1,654 Posts
    LoopDreams said:
    Duderonomy said:

    WTF is Q4?

    x2

    Awww, damn, doods...you haven't heard of Q4? It's only the coolest app to hit the music streaming app'verse...

    Just kidding. It's me overthinking a post title because it seems that the options to listen to music change (very conservatively speaking) on a quarterly basis and I think the board has loosely discussed this before so I was trying to put a time frame to it.

    ---

    I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to make Soul Strut be the major source of my music listening for the foreseeable future. Between the heat posted from member creations/suggestions and mixes, I don't think one could go wrong.

    Thank you to everyone for the input.

  • I'm a full time dad at the moment, so music wavers between weapon of choice and ultimate luxury depending on what is going on.
    day to day it is a smaller local dance radio station (via satellite tv) that hovers around good and utterly terrible, but my daughter (2.5) is loving commercial drum & bass (wilkinson / sigma et al) and all the big 'anthemy' trap (?) tunes going on at the moment.

    She also LOVES records, so picking a record from the shelves and putting them on is a thing she really likes doing.
    for me as a producer I like to keep an ear on whats going on, so i download a lot of mixes via soundcloud.
    outside of that... haven't bought a record in god knows how long, years. more down to location and budgetary restraints than anything else!


  • I'll second the mixcloud app.. Love that thing. On the weekends, especially Sunday, I carve out some morning time for records that I can have on in the living room as well as the kitchen. I've got a pretty high-end setup so I make it a point to play records as much as I can. I used to stream music through AirTunes but got sick of the occasional drop-outs and I actually have a nice vintage tube Luxman receiver with aux inputs that I may hook up to the system so I can then just hard wire whatever device I'd like to run through said system. If I'm working in the garden I'll take my jambox and just play mixcloud via bluetooth. Also just replaced my head unit in my '96 BMW so it too now connects via BT and I feel like a rejuvenated baller. This past summer my external TB took a crap and it had my current library, I mean that thing had everything. Sent it out to one of those recovery services and for about 1k they said they could get it back.. Thing is is that I have several externals with pretty much everything that that thing had save for maybe 8 months of a few things that I never bothered to back up. I can't stand having to back up my data, anyways I sorta forgot about it and honestly I don't really miss it.

  • OkemOkem 4,617 Posts
    For new music I stream stuff from soundcloud quiet a lot, or listen to recommendation from various forums, which will usually be soundcloud or YouTube.
    I still listen to the radio. BBC4 have a couple of comedy shows I like, but i'll generally download them rather than listen live. BBC 6Music is alright sometimes & 1xtra, I try and catch to Benji B's show fairly regularly. Rinse is also good. I have the TuneIn radio app so I can pick up all sorts of Internet radio, from old pirate stations that have now gone fully Internet, to US station like WFMU. I have Bluetooth speakers in the kitchen and the car also connects the same way.

    Aside from that I have the standard hard drive full of mp3s. I keep smaller, curated iTunes collection for syncing with various mobile devices. And an usb stick in the car so I never have to put up with what the radio is serving if I don't want to.

    My main computer and connected hardrives are linked in my hifi, tv etc, with the library also shared over the network. So it's all pretty connected, although there's room for improvement. For instance, if I'm linked to soundcloud mix whilst connected via the iPad, I don't really want to listen to it on tiny speakers, I want to send it to my hifi speakers. This can be achieved easily enough, but it then renders my iPad less usable. I don't want the candy crush sounds blasting out as well. We can't be far off just being able to tell my PC to play the link instead, I know OSX & iOS type intergration is the next 'thing' in operating system advancement, maybe it's already possible.

  • dukeofdelridgedukeofdelridge urgent.monkey.mice 2,453 Posts
    I have a new iPod. Nano I guess. It had 16 gigs of storage, which is insane to me. I have no problem tending to what's on there--I remember tapes and md, I can get in there every couple of weeks.

    I wander the neighborhood or sit on the bus with earbuds. Podcasts. On my commute in the car I go iPod USB cable--this shitty JVC deck can read iPod menus. Fifty bucks at Best Buy. Insane to me.

    It's better than ever. 16 gigs is so much for that little thing. I can't believe it.

    It's plugged into my computer a lot getting podcast updates, so I'd say I manage it a couple times a week.

    I don't stream anything but I'm open to it. Just bought a Bluetooth receiver to plug into my shitty home system and shoot music from the couch.

    I do listen to a "now playing" stack of about twenty records on weekends. I think the expedit looks good full of records--relating to that other sad thread. Shits cool looking and a good place to lean bikes.

  • I have an "all of the above" approach to listening. I have my trusty MP3 player at work, on its own (computers are set up not to accept them at work). In the car I have listen to both FM and Sirius radio. I have a CD player (mostly for my own music and mixes) and also a USB port. I can plug in my MP3 player or sometimes I download music/podcasts off my computer and play it from a thumb drive. I have an aux in plug too but I never use it.

  • ppadilhappadilha 2,233 Posts
    CBear said:
    Airport Expresses

    is yours as wonky as mine? I have one that's pretty old, maybe 1st or 2nd generation, and I'm always annoyed at the drop outs. Can't figure out what causes them either, but I wouldn't mind finding an alternative that's more reliable. I do like being able to stream only the itunes though, I get most of the new music via mp3 and I like listening to it on the stereo while I read things on my laptop, just wish it fucked up less often than it does.

    For music on the go I have some things on my iphone, but I kinda miss the old ipod I had that died. The iphone doesn't have enough room and I'm not good at rotating what's on there, so I eventually get tired of it. I don't even listen to music on it that often - only via aux on the car, but I'm not in the car that much. If I have a commute I sometimes listen to it on the bus, but right now I'm working on a project at home, so it's mostly records I listen to and some stuff off youtube when I take a break from work.

  • CBearCBear 902 Posts
    ppadilha said:
    CBear said:
    Airport Expresses

    is yours as wonky as mine? I have one that's pretty old, maybe 1st or 2nd generation, and I'm always annoyed at the drop outs. Can't figure out what causes them either, but I wouldn't mind finding an alternative that's more reliable. I do like being able to stream only the itunes though, I get most of the new music via mp3 and I like listening to it on the stereo while I read things on my laptop, just wish it fucked up less often than it does.

    For music on the go I have some things on my iphone, but I kinda miss the old ipod I had that died. The iphone doesn't have enough room and I'm not good at rotating what's on there, so I eventually get tired of it. I don't even listen to music on it that often - only via aux on the car, but I'm not in the car that much. If I have a commute I sometimes listen to it on the bus, but right now I'm working on a project at home, so it's mostly records I listen to and some stuff off youtube when I take a break from work.

    If I'm physically close to the airport express, it's near flawless. When I get too far away, it does drop out. I would also like to find a good alternative. The newer generations are dual-channel and better than the older ones. I've had a gen 1 since new and it's still kicking but does drop out more than the newer ones. They are usually findable on CL for $40-60.

    For rotating music on the iPhone, I keep a smart playlist that's called "iphone filler" and it's "random; everything that's over 128kb". I usually keep it at about 1800 songs (for a 32 gig). Any time I want to randomize the music on my phone I edit the playlist down to one song and then back to 1800. When I sync my phone it updates all the songs. Anything I'm tired of hearing or don't like gets a 1-star rating and then deleted from itunes altogether.

  • TDLT02TDLT02 149 Posts
    At home on a good Hi-Fi set up mostly vinyl, along with some CDs, as well as Soundcloud / Mixcloud, Blogpages mixes when sitting at the computer.
    On the move I use a A&K 120 WAV player (186g) with either a pair of Sennheiser HD25 - II modified phones (Stefan AudioArt cable and filters in cans removed), or a pair of Fostex TH600 cans.
    Looking forward in a couple of weeks (6th December) to getting to spin on this system that is around only for three months!
    It has a wonderful warm clear sound, though at £50,000 it should sound ok. LOL!
    http://www.merchantstavern.co.uk/spiritland/

  • I plug my 5 into the car via a territorial usb adapter specific to the car brand and it syncs the music and podcasts and directions from Siri. does not handle phone calls which is a pain but I'm adding a bluetooth speaker for that. Car has a cd player but I never use it. FM it's WBGO, WKCR, WBAI, WBLS, WNYC (NPR), Hot97. More or less in that order

    Speaking of which I realized yesterday that I'm utterly bored with the music on my phone and need to wipe it and start over. Does that ever happen to you guys?

  • discos_almadiscos_alma discos_alma 2,164 Posts
    Pandora and Spotify in the car, along with CDs (yeah, those) and then iPhone shuffle or albums for longer trips. Sometimes I'll play a track on the Soundcloud app while riding my bike and then just let it go wherever it goes or until it finally gets to some dubstep remix.

    I just copped one of these for playing music out at the beach or at BBQs. Can't recommend it enough. Bluetooth from whoever's phone wants to play DJ.
    http://www.ultimateears.com/en-us/boom



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