Your (Digital) Music-Listening Habits

In My Humble Opinion
1

Specifically, I wonder how people who listen to their music most often via computer (as opposed to CD, LP, tape, etc.) organize their playlists (or not). I’m curious because, although I’ve had iTunes and iPods for some years now, up until recently my computer didn’t have really good speakers, so most of my home listening was still via CD in my stereo. Once I bought speakers for my computer that could actually handle music, I rarely put a CD in the stereo anymore (and if I put one in the computer, chances are I’ll rip it into iTunes).

But the interesting thing is, I would still play songs in albums or in manually-created playlists that closely followed a particular theme (genre, sound, etc.). It’s only recently I’ve begun to use the shuffle option more regularly. My iTunes library is not huge (2,502 songs), but I’ve found it’s sufficiently diverse so that there’s stuff that comes up in shuffle that I may not have heard in a long while. And now I’ve been trying Apple’s Genius playlists and the new Genius Mixes a bit, and being generally pleased with the automated offerings. The advent of Pandora Radio also opened my eyes to more of a “Shuffle Experience” (and helps discover new artists, as well).

So. How do you listen? Do you have a honkin’ huge collection and let your player shuffle? Do you create customized playlists and only go through them? Some other method?

2

I Lurves the Genius function in iTunes. I frequently use it to make playlists to put on my iphone. When I work at home, the AppleTV is almost permanently on a genius playlist. It picks a lot of my music I wouldn’t normally think to pick.

Mostly, I listen to podcasts on the light rail commute. When I turn on iTunes on my laptop at work, I invariably have to turn it off five or ten minutes later.

3

Yeah, I find I’m liking the Genius function lately too. The Genius Mixes seem to be pretty good as well.

I’m thinking our habits probably owe a lot to our original “upbringing” in music - those of us who are used to albums probably started out listening to digital music the same way, whereas younger listeners who always bought single songs are more attuned to shuffling.

4

I usually just have my whole library (about 10700 tracks) on shuffle; sometimes I’ll pick a particular artist or several to listen to for a while. I like the Genius playlist feature, especially when I’m using my iPod, but I’ve been using it so much lately that I’ve noticed that it keeps giving me the same songs no matter which one I have it start from, so it’s getting old. Also, some of my favorite music isn’t in the Genius database.

5

My collection: I have a small-to-moderate-sized collection of around 3900 songs, pretty diverse. I usually buy entire albums from eMusic or Amazon, and occasionally will buy a CD if unavailable online. I don’t buy from iTunes, even though they have “no DRM” I still find their songs sometimes don’t work on my AAC-enabled devices.

My listening habits: I occasionally listen at my home PC, or online over my Windows Home Server remote access connection, but usually we listen on the Apple TV connected to our home theater system. We typically listen to entire albums in the living room, but when I’m at my PC I’ll occasionally skip around my collection manually as the mood suits me.

Although, inspired by this thread, I put my collection on shuffle, and so far, I’m liking what I’m hearing.

6

BTW, inspired by this thread, I’ve started a “share your shuffle tracks” thread here.

7

Even if I use a playlist, I normally play it on shuffled. The only times I don’t play something shuffled is when I’m listening to something like a play’s soundtrack, where song order makes sense. Anything I have on CD, plus some songs I have on vynil and a friend has on CD, are ripped into the computer. I want to have a shopping spree at amazon.co.uk but right now I’m being careful with my wallet (you can’t buy single songs from them outside the UK and there is no amazon.es).

I use MediaMonkey and often listen to the radio stations that come with it (shoutcast, you don’t need MM to get them). I also listen to the direct webcasts of several radio stations.

8

I usually either play an entire album through in order (yes, really) or shuffle “My Top Rated” (which requires me to actually rate things, but that’s not horrible). Sometimes I’ll shuffle an artist if I’m in the right mood. Genius Mixes seem promising, but I’ve only listened for about an hour so far, so I’m not quite sure yet. I never really got into using Genius the old way (creating playlists starting with a single song).

I currently have about 6300 songs in iTunes, and rarely would I want to shuffle across the whole collection. There’s too much random stuff like subpar album cuts, spoken word tracks, interludes, etc. in there (those tend to not be included in “Top Rated”).

I do have some playlists, both hand-crafted and “smart” (automatically generated). For example, I have a manually built playlist of songs I like to play as background music when we have company over. I use iTunes DJ (formerly known as “party shuffle”) to mix it up and play it on the stereo via an Airport Express (wireless streaming).

I have a playlist called “new songs” that is the newest 4GB of music in my library. I use that one because my iPhone isn’t anywhere near big enough to hold all of my music (I have an iPod Classic that is, and I use it for most of my listening, but it’s nice to have some on the iPhone). I like having anything I’ve bought recently available on the phone, and it helps me fill the phone with the maximum possible amount of music without having to do a lot of twiddling with which playlists get synced. Of course, now iTunes 9 has a feature to fill in the free space with music, which solves that problem automatically.

I have a playlist for songs to listen to while I’m working out, because I like high tempo songs for that.

I have a few themed playlists. For example, I have a “Grammy 2009” playlist I made a few weeks before the Grammys when I wanted to get more familiar with the nominated music.

FWIW, I most often buy complete albums (both from Amazon and iTunes). If it’s an artist I already know and like, I buy the whole album. If I know I like more than two or three songs, I buy the whole album. Only if it’s an artist I’m unsure about and I only know one or two songs I like, do I buy single tracks.

ETA: I also listen to Pandora from time to time, and Sirius/XM streaming quite often.

9

Not being an Apple afficianado, I don’t use iTunes, nor have I any idea what the Genius function is.

I rarely use playlists, except when I want to hear a very ‘best of’ an artist.

I usually listen to my 12,000+ tracks on shuffle, except when I get the urge to listen a particular artist. For example, the reissue of the Beatles albums has nudged me in to listening to a lot of their stuff again.

I’ve never been very keen on CDs, so mp3s are a godsend. I love the ease of use of a digital collection, and listening to my music in the order I want. I have very good in ear monitors for my mp3 player, and good speakers for my laptop, so I have no need - or interest in - a ‘hi-fi’ system. (God - how old fashioned that term sounds.)

10

My laptop has fairly decent speakers. I listen to classical music most of the time so shuffle doesn’t work.

I listen to music often on the laptop. Usually, I’m picking music from the library of CDs that I’ve imported. If I’m up early, I’ll often stream an NPR station broadcasting classical or jazz. If I’m up that early, I’m usually reading.

I just bought a new ipod nano to replace my 2.5 year old one which died. The ipod is usually for podcasts that I’ll listen to while working out or at work. There is enough music there to keep me interested if I run out of podcasts or want a change of pace.