How do you listen to music?

[malictus]

This is sort of a companion thread to the very popular music thread. I'm just interested in everyone's music listening habits. How do you obtain music? Where do you listen to music and from what source (stereo, iPod, computer, etc.)?

Things are changing rapidly and some people are already predicting the end for traditional music packaging (CD's). Since I work in this field (I work on music library software), I'm just curious as to what everyone's listening habits are.

I'll go first: I subscribe to Rhapsody. For $10 a month I get unlimited listening of anything I want. Since 95% of my listening is done while near a computer with a network connection (either at work or home) I have little need for buying CD's or downloading tracks. When I do want to burn specific tracks to listen to in the car, though, I turn to a great program called TotalRecorder to burn tracks from Rhapsody without having to pay. So I'm almost completely legal in the ways I get music, but not quite

[CgSquall]

on my computer it's mostly from CDs i've actually bought, but probably half of my music is from either http://www.ocremix.org or some mp3 downloading software....on my cpu i use WinAmp, in my car i have a nice Pioneer CD player....maybe i'm just odd and you know...actually buy music still.

[dancing queen iu]

At home I have iTunes. I don't even own a stereo system anymore. And in the car I have an iTrip so I plug that in and listen to my iPod. The iTrip is just about the most useful device ever in the car, and it's only like $40. But, I am legit, my iTunes library is totally comprised of either CDs I bought (I still buy tons of CDs) or ones I burned from friends.

[xK1]

Much of the stuff that I listen to anymore is either unavailable on CD or prohibitively expensive to import, so I do make use of P2P services occasionally. I've used the iTunes store a little bit, thus far only with the free downloads from their Pepsi promotions, but as soon as I get around to buying one of their gift card things from Target or somewhere I have some other stuff I'd like to get from there.

I own way too many CDs, I don't have an esitmate but my collection fills two 36 Qt plastic containers. Nowadays I only buy a CD about every other month though. I honestly can't remember what the last one I bought was. I went to Best Buy this weekend and looked around but didn't see anything I really wanted to get.

Most of the time I listen to stuff through iTunes on my computer, from time to time I will burn a CD from my mp3 collection to listen to while walking to class.

My car has a really shitty stereo and a tape player, and because most of the time the only radio worth listening to is NPR, I'm usually playing one of two old mixtapes I have. One is a Nine Inch Nails compilation I made from my CDs, the other is a Jungle mixtape I got at a rave about six years ago. Right now I'm pretty sick of both so I drive in silence or singing to myself (which happens more often then I care to admit).

[Original Sin]

At home, I generally listen to music on my computer. However, the library of music I have on my computer is made up almost entirely of CD's I've bought through the years. I use p2p occasionally, but generally only on hard to find or import music. sometimes, if I hear of something I might like, I'll download a track or two by the artist, and if I like it, I'll but their CD, but other than that, I generally don't pirate music.
At work I have an actual stereo, and CD's, since I don't like to listen to the radio much anymore.
In the car, I also listen to CD's, but since my indash cassette player is busted, I use a portable CD player rigged up to some speakers and a small subwoofer I ...uh, installed/shoved in random empty space in my car. Yeah, it's janky, but I don't feel like installing a new indash, and actually fixing what's left of my real stereo system.

[aspen]

Well, I'm, in way, a bum. I bum music I accumulate music through friends and stuff. I download some music when I can.

However, if I like a cd, I will buy it. I still collect cd's as a hobby I guess. I have over 300 cd's now, and still buy them when I find good ones or nice deals. The way I look at it is, the 28,000 songs I have on my HD can disappear in a flash with one glitch of the computer(like what happened to my pictures). However, my cd's will always be there, unless someone steals them. And it's not to easy to steal 300 cased cd's. True, I could back up my music on DVD-R's or something, but 104gig would take up a lot of DVD-R's...

Plus, I'm old school....in a way

[SoDeepPolaris]

players: My random stereos around the house, my computer(winamp), and my iRiver H320(20gb of color goodness, owns your iPod Photo's soul)
P.S. Any stereo w/ line in can be used by my iriver, so I really have no need for those travel speakers that break their cones after a few trips. If not, I just bring a casette adapter which works 95% of the time.

sources:Stores and P2P(I'm a p2p fiend, sadly, once I get a job I'll be an Amazon fiend)


My CD collection is around 200, would be bigger but I sold alot of my top40 music from when I was in 2-3rd grade and didn't know what real music was. MP3's are around 1500-2000. Yeesh.

[Secef]

I listen to music in two ways: My Ilo 128 MB mp3 player (screw expensive iPods, this is all the space I need for a day's worth of music) and my computer.

My sources, well... I download music, rip music from my giant CD collection at home, and get music from friends. I haven't bought many real CDs recently. However... it must be noted that I very very rarely download American songs, even more rarely albums at a time. I usually check out a couple tracks, and if I like what I hear, I'll go buy the album. Also, I listen primarily to Japanese music, and real CDs of that are pretty hard to obtain, not to mention ridiculously expensive. For example, my GO!GO!7188 live CD cost $40. =/ Not that price and availability justify piracy though.

[Ebola Gay]

I'm a pirate, pure and simple. I download all my music. I, personally, do not feel there is any music out there that is worth buying, considering that most of the stuff that I've heard lately is crap. And even if I found an artist I liked, it'd be hard to buy a cd, because they get pretty much nothing. I'm not about to give $15 to some company, when all the artist sees of that is 30 cents.

Don't get me wrong, I'll buy CDs. I just has to be an artist I really, really like. Last CD I bought was about a year ago, as a recall, Polysic's "National P". Now if it's an indie label, I probably would buy a cd or two, since the profit on those is usually split 50/50. That's the way thing are supposed to be.

I admit though, that I have a soft spot for vinyl. I buy vinyl a lot.

[Potter]

I don't do anything to get my music, I let other ppl do it for me. My fellow ppl spend years making the ultimite collection and then at lan parties....boom, ive got 80 gigs of music. I also occasionally rip my friends cd'es to.

And to play it I use my comp and wen my rents arent home i turn on my reciever that is connected to my comp and rock out with my..um.music out.

the program i use kicks ass. It loads as fast as a context menu (right clicking) and it uses about 50x less system rescources than windows media pooper. Here it is if you want it...i give it a 10 out of 10...


http://www.foobar2000.org/download.html

[LikeableRodent]

My computer acts as my media hub for both audio and video, so most everything I watch and listen to runs off of it.

I remember specifically that in the past nine years I've purchased a total of one music CD, and that was a gift for my brother. The only other audio CDs I've purchased in that time were the seven workbook CDs that came with the textbook for my Japanese class.

I've also received two other music CDs as gifts, so that totals out to 3 music CDs and 7 educational speech CDs. I have a bias against physical media, as I just don't like it taking up space and I don't like dealing with it, so of course I ripped the few CDs I own to my computer and use those instead of the real things.

Back before Napster and the rise of other P2P services if I wanted music I'd just borrow CDs from other people and rip them, but now that it's much easier to acquire albums, most everything I have is what I get from the internet.

Oh yes, I use Winamp 5.08 with the classic interface to play audio.

[letshavetea]

umm... the only music i really listen to is either an online radio, DDR music, or stuff my friends have put on my xbox for me.. i dont really listen to much music though...

but to listen to stuff off my xbox i have these old blue speakers with a sub... they are decent.. and on my PC i have just these really crappy Emachine speakers...

[God Of Rock]

Well I listen to it on my stereo, computer, in my car, on the cd player,
pretty much anywhere I can. I do a lot of pira....er... sampling so my
selection is fairly robust.

Although I have this bad habit of burning cds and not writing anything
on them to distinguish them from the others....oh well.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I listen to music on my iPod.

I obtain my music from P2P programs, and BitTorrent (entire albums). I only buy the CD of an artist if I want to support their music. Thus, I only own CD's by my favorite bands. This logic suits me just fine.

[Gatekeeper]

My primary music source is my 40gb mp3 collection, which is triply rudundant between my machine's hd, my brother's hd, and my 250gb external hard drive (which I refer to as "my big pen drive"). The two on the machines are kept in sync with a simple xcopy cron job that runs nightly. The external drive is manualy sync'd with an xcopy when I feel it needs updating.

I have home theatre quality 5.1 surround speakers on my computer. I do not own any type of boombox or stereo. I do however have a 256mb MuVo, which is only so-so, but it does for running.

In the car I enjoy my mp3 cd player. It never skips when playing mp3 CDs, and I can put an average of ten regular albums on one CD. I keep the CDs in one of those awesome pouch things that straps to my visor and keeps me from using the mirror.

Half my music is legit downloads from Allofmp3 (that's a link, you can click it). They're a good Russian based service with a reasonable selection. The primary advantages they have over iTunes and Rhapdosy are that 1) you can pick between a large selection of formats / bitrates and 2) you are charged per mb not per song. Sadly they have primarily Western stuff, so for the other half of my collection I turn to imports or, yes, p2p.

I agree with Potter, foobar2000 (another link people) is the way to go. Small memory footprint, fast loading, very modular so you can make your own plugins (I'm developing my own for better front / rear channel seperation) everything Winamp used to be before they sold out.