How do you listen to your music?

[Eonwe]

I'm going back to the realm of CDs, and am wondering how many folks use hard media for their music anymore.

For quite a long time I've been computer only; I've ripped my 700+ CD collection to the computer and then put the CDs away in boxes. Every new album I get gets the same treatment. I've got an ipod that holds my entire collection, so I basically have access to everything at a moment's notice.

But, I've found that over the last year or so, I've just gotten burnt out on music. Well, not the music, but the method of delivery.

Shuffle, which was the most exciting component of my ipod when I first bought it, has ended up being more frustrating than anything. The random and bizarre mix of songs that it spits out is usually jarring, and requires me to spend more time skipping over things I don't want to hear than I do listening.

Trying to parse the giant spreadsheet of artists/albums/songs is also mind-numbing, and I just can't make selections in a satisfying way.

I remember when I used to have my CDs out on the shelf (and records in my childhood), and getting inspired about what to listen to by the visual element of the album bindings/covers. And, once I made a choice, I'd be much more likely to listen to the whole thing than I am now.

Anyway, long story short, I'm making room to put the CDs out again in hopes that it'll get me actually listening to stuff again.

How do you get your music fix? mp3s on the computer? Pandora? Victroloa?

[Fried Dough Ho]

I could tell the same story as you. I literally have 49 DAYS worth of music but because it is in a file, I don't actually listen to any of it except through the iPod and its shuffle. I haven't had time to categorize and rate the tunes so that those I like play more than the others and, consequently, I listen to my music far less than I used to.

I did, however, just get a job and have started a Pandora account. I am only three weeks into playing with it and I am not that thrilled with its ability to mix in what I would like. I get certain bands a lot but it takes a lot of effort (when I am trying to work) to gives thumbs-up or thumbs-down on tunes just to keep the mix moving.

I got rid of my CDs and only have files now, but I miss the ability to listen to an entire album -- especially those which benefit from a full listen from beginning to end versus a sampling of a song here or there (Kate Bush's Hounds of Love comes to mind, for example).

[Peremensoe]

I guess I've decided that there's no point to having an archive of ripped music on the computer. When I'm at the computer, I can listen to any of a variety of free streaming music sources. When I'm not at the computer, I listen to CDs. I like being able to browse shelves of physical albums, or offer them for browsing to guests.

[Ellis Dee]

All mp3 all the time.

I have long maintained a simple music folder structure. One side starts with a Library folder, and underneath that are artists then albums. I never listen to any of that. The other side is Favorites, and underneath that are around a dozen folders, 9 of which are artists and 3 are genres. None have any subfolders, just a bunch of songs, all of which are hand-selected personal favorites I've assembled over the years.

My mp3 player only has the Favorites tree. Sometimes I listen via regular shuffle, sometimes I tell the mp3 player to just shuffle a single folder.

[jali]

I have different playlists for my Ipod. This works for me.

[Voyager]

Two ways. CDs in my car on my way too and from work. My Droid when I'm walking my dog. I haven't had time to rip all but a small part of my CD collection to my Droid.

[tdn]

CDs exclusively. I have an mp3 player but never use it. I never listen to music on the go. When I listen, I sit down and listen.

I play the CDs on my laptop. The speakers I hook up to it are pretty decent.

[Cat Whisperer]

I guess I've decided that there's no point to having an archive of ripped music on the computer. When I'm at the computer, I can listen to any of a variety of free streaming music sources. When I'm not at the computer, I listen to CDs. I like being able to browse shelves of physical albums, or offer them for browsing to guests.
I have the cds on the shelf downstairs, our entire library on my computer, and three dvds with all our music on them in a fireproof box in the house (you can fit A LOT of music on a dvd). You don't have to listen to all your cds on the computer to have backing them up be a good idea.

I make playlists on iTunes that I find very useful - I make obvious playlists, like playlists of artists for which I have multiple albums (an mp3 player will play by artist, but that can leave out large sections that should be together - Prince, Prince and the Revolution, Prince and NPG, The Artist..., etc.). I also make playlists like Fast Songs, Slow Songs, New Stuff, Unrated, like that.

ETA: I listen to music on the go all the time on an mp3 player, too. I LOVE portable, compact music. LOVE IT!

[control-z]

MP3s in the car, MP3s and radio during the day. I like shuffle quite a bit.

I have a music player app on my iTouch called FlickTunes which works nicely with shuffle. If it shuffles to an artist I want to hear more of, I just do a 3-finger swipe upwards on the screen and it shuffles just that artist. Then three fingers down goes back to shuffle all.

[Peremensoe]

You don't have to listen to all your cds on the computer to have backing them up be a good idea.

Sure, backups are always good idea.

For me, as it happens, most backups for material I already have on physical media is going to be put off until I've got the stuff that's only on the computer (purchased or received as lossless download because physical media wasn't available at all) properly burned.

When I backup, it won't be to my primary hard drive.

[Kim o the Concrete Jungle]

I ripped all my CDs to 192Kb/s mp3s, which I keep on a couple of thumb drives. When I want to listen to music, I just plug one of those into the nearest computer. I still like to have the CDs though. It's hard to be enthusiastic about a low quality mp3 full of typical mp3 glitches and artifacts. Sometimes quality matters.

[suranyi]

I used to listen to music all the time, but in recent years I find that I only do on the commute to and from work (which is about 40 minutes each way). Elsewhere I'm just too busy doing other stuff to bother.

I use both CDs and mp3s through my car stereo.

[Hodge]

I have about 1300+ CDs which I've ripped to FLAC and use Foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/) to organize and play them. I caution everybody who goes that route to make sure you have backups. About 6 years ago, my MP3 drive failed and I had to re-rip several hundred CDs over a period of a couple of months. It got to the point I was dreaming about popping CDs in and out of the CDROM. However, it did gave me a chance to start fresh and rip to lossless FLAC with a properly organized directory structure and download CD cover art while I was at it. I now keep all my music on a separate internal harddrive and back them up to external USB drive just to be safe.

I don't really stream any audio over the net because streaming services in Canada are pretty sparse and sites like Pandora and lastFM are paid-subscription here. But I do buy albums at eMusic which is awesome if you're into classical, jazz and indie music but not so much if you want mainstream pop and rock.

I'm pretty much always listening to music when I'm at the computer but I also invested in a USB wireless transmitter (http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Audioengine-W1) so I can stream music from my upstairs computer to the living room stereo system using my iPod touch with a remote control app to control the computer. I love this setup since it gives me complete control from anywhere in the house. If I'm in the kitchen cooking, say, I can pull out the touch to play, pause or skip tracks all while I'm cooking up a kick-ass beef & broccoli stir fry.

[Le Ministre de l'au-delà]

Vinyl and CD through the stereo. I have various little iPod speakers throughout the house, and I can play the iPod through the car speakers, and lots of the collection has been ripped to the computer.

I have everything on iTunes organized so that there are playlist folders of every given artist. For jazz and rock artists, these folders have smart playlists based on the album. For classical artists (by which I mean the composers, not the performers - I've edited the info accordingly.), the folders have smart playlists of all the movements of longer works.

The advantages of all this are
- if I want to shuffle through a particular artist's work, I can hit 'play' on the playlist folder with the shuffle on and it'll sift through all the albums I have of that artist. For example, 'Cassandra Wilson' will shuffle through 'Belly of the Sun', 'Travelling Miles' and 'New Moon Daughter'.
- I can put albums under the names of both artists when that's appropriate. 'Sargasso Sea' is filed under both John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman's album is filed in both artists' playlist folder, etc.
- With the shuffle off, I can listen all the way through a single string quartet, symphony or piano sonata. Then when it is finished, silence, until I decide to listen to something else.
- I can also create playlists of a certain style or instrumentation. I have a series of guitar, piano, string quartet, symphony orchestra playlists.

One of the big things for me is going in and re-doing the information from the CD data base - their opinions on genre are worthless, and I hate having classical music file itself under the performer. It's funny that Wiki has become a better source for determining who is playing on what album than the CDDB.

[woodstockbirdybird]

All mp3s. Got my iPod on all day at work, hook it up in the car, and have a speaker system at home that I plug it into. I've got over a year's worth of music on an external hard drive (over 100,000 songs) and there's no way I'd have room for all those CDs in my house. I'm glad for digital files - paid my mortgage for months on the CDs I sold after ripping them.

[Tamerlane]

I'm a dinosaur. All CD's and the occasional cassette ( my car has a player ) of things unavailable on CD. Car, computer or stereo. I have packed away all my vinyl, though - too much hassle even for me.

No Mp3s and no portable players of any sort. I've never liked any portable music device on principle, even back to the days of the original Walkman and the little transistor radios with their single ear plug. I hate being that distracted from the environment around me.

[Le Ministre de l'au-delà]

No Mp3s and no portable players of any sort. I've never liked any portable music device on principle, even back to the days of the original Walkman and the little transistor radios with their single ear plug. I hate being that distracted from the environment around me.

You've got a good point there - the sound environments I can drown out with a classical guitar recording are exactly the sound environments I want to listen to. The subway drowns out anything subtle, unless you want to wreck your ears...

[Hodge]

- if I want to shuffle through a particular artist's work, I can hit 'play' on the playlist folder with the shuffle on and it'll sift through all the albums I have of that artist. For example, 'Cassandra Wilson' will shuffle through 'Belly of the Sun', 'Travelling Miles' and 'New Moon Daughter'.She's awesome! "New Moon Daugher" and "Blue Light Til' Dawn" are two of my all-time favourite female jazz vocal albums.

One of the big things for me is going in and re-doing the information from the CD data base - their opinions on genre are worthless, and I hate having classical music file itself under the performer. It's funny that Wiki has become a better source for determining who is playing on what album than the CDDB.This issue is one of many reasons why I always recommend Foobar2K to any serious music collector with geeky tendencies. You can create your own custom tags with multiple fields, if necessary. That's particularly useful for jazz and classical albums. For instance, for a Martha Argerich Chopin Concerto album, I can tag the files with ARTIST = Martha Argerich, COMPOSER = Frederic Chopin, PERFORMER = Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal; Charles Dutoit, and SOLOIST = Martha Argerich. The same goes for Jazz, ARTIST = Miles Davis and PERFORMER = Miles Davis; John Coltrane; Herbie Hancock; etc. I can then search, sort and create playlists on any of those fields.

The only drawback is that the default interface is a little spartan and non-intuitive if you're used to iTunes or Winamp. But if you're willing to put a little effort into learning how to customize it and how the 'Tagz' scripting language works its an incredibly powerful music library player and manager.

[Snowboarder Bo]

CDs at home and in the truck, mp3 when working out. mp3 on the computer, too. Sometimes mp3 at home, but I like listening to albums, and my iphone is my ipod, so it's not convenient to use while at home.

[multimediac17]

When I'm at home I listen through the computer, usually with headphones on. If I want it to be extra loud or possible for me to hear all through the house then I'll play CDs on my Xbox, and if I'm doing housework like cleaning the kitchen we have a little boombox which I carry around with me playing whatever CDs I felt like listening to that day. When out and about I'm one of those people who has headphones glued to their ears at all appropriate times.

Even though I listen mostly on the computer/my iPhone, physical media is still really important to me and I buy whatever I possibly can on CD. In the 12 or so years since I got my first one I've managed to build a collection of about 1400 CDs and have them all on display in my bedroom, but I'm not pulling them off the shelf and putting them in a CD player every day.

[Thudlow Boink]

I still own lots of physical CDs. Sometimes I listen to the CDs themselves, sometimes I rip them temporarily to my mp3 player, for portability and convenience, and listen to them there and then delete them to make room for more. For the most part I listen to whole albums (or in the case of classical muic, whole symphonies, concertos, etc.) rather than individual songs, but I have been known to rip individual tracks and make myself a shufflable playlist.

Someday, due to space issues, I may have to rip a lot of my music to a hard drive (or DVD-Rs or something like that) and put the CDs themselves in storage somewhere. But I can't see mayself selling or giving away the CDs. Partly for legal and ethical reasons—if I no longer own the CDs, my legal and ethical right to possess the songs is doubtful at best. Partly because I'd be afraid of losing all my music in a hard drive failure or something like that. Partly because I like the "documentation" that comes with the CD (the lyrics, credits, photos, liner notes, etc.). And partly because, if it's an album or artist I care about, the CD is a physical Artifact that I want to have on my shelves to show my support.

[multimediac17]

Partly because I'd be afraid of losing all my music in a hard drive failure or something like that. Partly because I like the "documentation" that comes with the CD (the lyrics, credits, photos, liner notes, etc.). And partly because, if it's an album or artist I care about, the CD is a physical Artifact that I want to have on my shelves to show my support.

These are all reasons that I too always buy CDs when available (and would never get rid of them/sell them). That first reason scares me - even though I have a digital backup of all my music, that's never 100% and short of some horrible accident wiping out all my physical media, CDs are much less likely to fail me and are therefore the best backup I can think of.