This isn’t video games but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Mainly because I’ve been having this argument about Apple Music. My argument: Apple has missed the boat. I’m already a Spotify subscriber and I don’t see myself shifting. But maybe I’m the exception. Maybe I’m an early adopter? How are you listening to music these days?
My feeling is that Apple is about two or three years late on this idea. It took its eye off the ball on this one.
Once upon a time Apple absolutely owned music. Now it doesn’t. Apple Music feels like an attempt to wrestle that ownership back, but it’s too late.
What are your thoughts? And how are you listening to music these days? What services are you using?
Comments
67 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: How Do You Listen To Music?”
I buy tracks/cd’s I like and when I get sick of my collection jump on Pandora til I find my next purchase. Much prefer to have downloaded copies rather than streaming or a Spotify “collection”.
I agree. Streaming services seem very attractive because in the short term you get access to a lot of stuff – however I’m not so keen on the idea of forking out $10pm for the rest of my life. I think I would prefer to use the free services to discover music then buy a permanent copy, which I can use forever.
I think streaming is OK when you’re young and building a collection – cause I think younger people tend to buy more music anyway. There is no way I would have an average monthly spend of $10.
Been a Spotify subscriber since it launched here, no interest in changing whatsoever. Has everything I need and missing out on Taylor Swift is a plus!
I listen to it loud. 🙂
But in all seriousness, usually a radio of some sort recently. Either streaming web (browser or phone app), or traditional in the car. It depends on my mood for the station selection. I do have a selection of MP3 files on my phone for when I’m desperate though.
MOG. The app isn’t great and it certainly isn’t as clever as Spotify, but the data is unmetered on Telstra mobile.
Spotify and Bandcamp to discover new music and purchase whatever I really like. Been duped by so many bad albums in the past. Plus I am going to throw in some musical suggestions as a bonus round.
Speak low if you speak love, TTNG, Crash of Rhinos, Self Evident, Vela Ceras, Closure in Moscow, Owen (Mike Kinsella) Tangled hair, Fractures, Ben Abraham, Olde Pine (first two EPs) Everyone Everywhere, Sianvar and Vasco da Gama.
Hope you enjoy.
Spotify premium, it’s just so easy. I’m not a huge music person I just like to put it on in the background while I do things and it’s perfect for that.
I’m one of the very small minority that still buy CD’s. Only because, the quality is unmatched and is way better then mp3’s or streaming services. If you have a great quality pair of headphones/earphones you can easily tell the difference between a high quality mp3 and the original CD.
Having said that though, I do convert them to mp3’s using software that outputs a much better quality mp3 then iTunes or any other services I’ve managed to find. It’s not perfect but it’s close enough, I prefer not having to card CD’s around 🙂
I don’t mean any offense when i say this, but I believe basically noone save from a few people with superhuman ears can tell the difference between cd quality and a 320 mp3. Double blind tests have proven this over and over again.
I only really listen to music to and from work. Ripped MP3s from my CDs on to my Vita. A bluetooth headphone adapter works a treat.
Only have a 5 minute drive to work so whatever the radio decides to play.
At home it’s generally a journey through the YouTube recommendation sidebar rabbit hole. Can find some neat stuff through that as well as a bunch of stuff I’d forgotten.
I buy albums (digital or CD) to support my favourite bands. I’ll use youtube or spotify to check out some tracks of bands I’m interested in or that are touring with Soundwave festival or other bands I’m seeing etc that I might check out. I’m just old school and don’t ever see myself using a service like spotfiy to replace actually buying albums.
I’m also old school (and old! :P) and buy CDs to support bands. Although a better way to support your favourite bands is probably to buy merch directly from them.
But I also have a Google Play Music sub which I can’t live without. Most laptops these days don’t come with CD drives, so I don’t need to bother plugging in the external just to rip the CD anymore, I just load it up on Play Music. It’s also great for listening to new releases while you’re waiting for your physical copy to arrive in the mail, not to mention how awesome it is for finding new artists to your taste.
I imagine Spotify is just as handy. Music subscription services are a great way to supplement buying albums.
I’m still a traditional listener who has a massive library of MP3s gathered from a multitude of sources that I play through my phone or PC. One day I’ll probably try out a streaming service but I generally try and directly support artists I like so purchasing discrete collections of music tends to be my preference.
I think Google Play is fantastic for $12 a month. It has a huge range, gets new albums basically when they launch, and makes it easy to upload my own tracks if they aren’t available in their catalogue (e.g. TISM). I like the way I can download stuff to listen to offline. My only complaint is that it focuses too much on big pretty pictures, which makes it hard to take in lots of choices at once when browsing, and forces you to do lots of scrolling instead.
I set it up on a secondary google account and attached it to both my phone and my wife’s. Works well!
I second this. Love Google Play Music. Definitely love the downloading music option, too.
I also set it to cache my random playlist when connected to WiFi, so when I jump in the car it doesn’t use my data.
I’ve got so many great playlists set up though, I’d be terribly upset if the service ever went away. But, that’s the trade off with all of the streaming services.
I also have a sub for Digitally Imported radio. I’m grandfathered in at the $5 price though, but it’s great for when I just want some nice electronic music, particularly at work.
Guys, you can download premium spotify’s music onto your phone, and use “offline mode” so you dont waste data. Its basically removed any need to aquire music any other way, now i just need a bigger HDD on my phone.
iPod & YouTube
I like a broad range of musical styles but outside of orchestral, I can’t stand the randomness of radio or radio style services.
Much prefer finding my own stuff & creating my own playlists or just listening to entire albums.
Headphones. :3
Generally, I’m going on a library of MP3s I’ve been amassing since the turn of the century. In the past few years I’ve added to it with purchases from the Google Play store. Since I generally listen to music on my phone while out and about, and since mobile internet is still piss-poor, I much prefer being able to listen to a decent quality without buffering or ads. I’ve tried Spotify for listening to music on PS4, and while it’s nice, that ad referring to zombie apocalypses is absolutely cringeworthy – much prefer to just stick in a thumb drive and listen to music from that. Or, you know, stream it from my PC if they ever bother to add DLNA support.
I use Google Play music. It’s pretty great
It is, But Damn, going from Library to now playing, I hate seeing two separate animation window’s when there only needs to be one.
CD’s. Was using Google play but my micro sd crapped it self, so cancelled my subscription. Listen to the radio in the car.
Using my ears. It works.
…I don’t listen to music much.
Spotify premium here. Use it offline on my mobile and when I’m doing work/playing games on the computer.
If I really like a band or soundtrack, I buy the CD. Otherwise it’s iTunes and the iPod for me.
I have a smallish collection of CDs that I very occasionally add to. Usually I listen to mp3s obtained legitimately through iTunes if possible, or from other sources if not. SBS PopAsia is a backup 🙂
I’ve tried Spotify but it eats up too much of my data so it’s not viable. Some people at my company started using it on the office wifi but I guss that was creating network speed issues so they’ve started blocking any streaming apps on personal phones like spotify, youtube and (weirdly) twitter.
So I pretty much just buy albums on iTunes and put them on my phone.
If you pay for premium you can just download the tracks so it doesnt use data.
I use the free Spotify at home on PS4 (like it better than the free version on mobile since you have the full functionality (skipping tracks, playing whatever song you want etc) with ads, compared to the mobile version which is much more limited.
As far as actually buying music, I want it in mp3 format, so I’ll either buy it on CD and rip it to mp3, or I’ll buy a download if it’s a plain old DRM-free mp3. I then copy those mp3’s onto my phone, the USB drive in my car, the hard drive on my PS3 hooked up to the amp, etc. I refuse to buy any music digitally if it’s going to restrict where / how I can play it.
Buy CD > rip to FLAC > run in MusicBee > upload to phone
WITH MY EARS HUR HUR HUR
Spotify to create playlists of songs I already know about, with the occasional Radio play at home on Wifi.
Soundcloud for discovering various new songs/DJ sets etc
MP3s in Itunes/Spotify at home.
Occassionally dig up CDs
iTunes on PC, synced to my (android) phone with an app that I don’t think you can get anymore. I know it’s probably not the best quality-wise or the most simple but everytime I’ve tried to change in the past, it just seemed like an insane amount of effort to move my entire collection and the service didn’t seem any better.
Will probably need to change at some point though, using iTunes with android get more annoying all the time.
I still used CD’s in my car though – one CD I should say, an MP3 CD with about 95 tracks on it that I’ve been to lazy to replace/update for about the last 3 years lol.
It’s strange considering Apple pretty much owes it’s revival in the early 2000s down the iPod that they should be so behind on bringing out Apple Music, but hey, that’s what they do. They weren’t the first company with an MP3 player, but they waited to see what the market brought out and then refined their own version.
I use Spotify though thanks to it being free on my Vodafone contract, and if/when Apple Music is on Android, there’s not really much to convince me to change. There’s a few record companies not on Spotify, there’ll be a few not on Apple Music, but for those I just use my own collection to fill in the blanks. Plus I can control Spotify on my PS4 with my phone
I listen to mostly FLAC’s through Foobar. I also get the odd CD.
I’ve used Spotify a few times for things tha are hard to find and that but I don’t really like it much. The desktop app is really shit and the sound quality is worse.
The sound quality is totally fine if you set it to ‘extreme’ aka 320kbps
It’s okay, but not as good as uncompressed sound.
Apple Music/iTunes and iPhone.
At work or on the move: Spotify
At home: FLAC files using Kodi for playback
Download a leak ASAP in the deep dark corners of the net, then buy through my favourite band’s bandcamp pages for FLAC files to put on my phone if possible. Otherwise I always like having a physical CD for collections sake.
I listen to music from a USB drive attached to my car stereo.
As of this year I’ve been getting a lot of my music on vinyl. Re-purchasing my old favourites and some new favourites as well. There’s a certain warmth to vinyl you can’t replicate with digital audio.
Using my iPhone mostly – always blue toothed through my car stereo.
When I’m home there are several gargantuan playlist of video clips on YouTube (tried Vevo butt their selection is limited) that I maintain to play in the background (ESP when friends are over)
Don’t sub to a streaming service
I love Spotify and really see no reason to switch to any other competitor. I used to have a huge digital download collection that I would play with Media Monkey but it just seems so redundant now Spotify exists that I just don’t bother with digital download music anymore.
I did experiment with Google Music as the ability to upload music is a really awesome feature but I found that it is really lacking in discovering new music. With Spotify I can add playlists like triple j, hot alternative etc… which are constantly updated and easily find the latest most popular music of the genre I’m looking in. Google Play really doesn’t have anything similar. You can listen to a radio station but there isn’t any way to easily find the latest music. That’s why I’ve stuck with Spotify as I value music discovery > music upload.
Usually as MP3 off my phone, or CD.
But the best way to listen to music has got to be standing in front of a stage with a beer in my hand
I still buy a lot of CD’s for the car and vinyls for home but I listen to music through downloads and such on my Ipod and ltunes. Plus Youtube, radio and whatever else is handy.
Another Spotify user here.
I have a relatively large collection of MP3s collected over the years but since I signed up to Spotify I really don’t listen to them that much anymore.
I will listen to CDs and radio in the car.
When I eventually get a new car that allows bluetooth streaming I’ll probably start using Spotify then too.
I honestly have found more new music through Spotify then I have any other way in years.
It’s been fantastic and has lead me to listening to a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise.
I don’t have an iPhone so don’t see any reason to change away from Spotify. If I do get one in the future I will likely still stick with Spotify since it already has all my collections and albums.
And I think that will be apples problem. So many people are alredy embedded in the Spotify world. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to change.
Mp3, vinyl for djing, and soundcloud and spotify in the car at work etc.
Now if there was a way they could integrate spotify and digital djing…
I used to use Winamp at home and the native iPhone music app on my phone and Spotify on my work laptop.
Now I use Spotify on everything. It just…works. Sure, some stuff is missing, but local files + offline play eliminates most of those problems.
Xbox Music, got a massive collection of about 1200 albums on the phone, PC at work and Xbox One at home. And whenever I want to add .mp3s I chuck them in OneDrive and it picks them up and plays them anywhere.
Recently signed up to Spotify and loving it, backed up all my old MP3’s and deleted them to free some space. Found that there are some really good play lists to listen to when i study and haven’t found any music that i missing, plus found new stuff i probably wouldn’t have discovered before.
Just involves a bit of forward planning to download some music for the drive to and from work, but so far loving it and don’t see myself going back.
I signed up to Spotify a few months back after using the free version for quite some time. Loving the ability to download my playlists to my phone and listen to them without the need for an internet connection. Sure, not every song is available, but searching for a band and coming up blank is quite rare…except for Tool 🙁
Oh, and the ability to use Spotify on my phone, computer and PS3/PS4 is brilliant. Just load up the PS4 Spotfy app then do everything else from the phone.
I have no intention on changing to Apple music…I actually have no intention on checking out the free version either, I see no need.
Sorry see below
Anyone else here hate iTunes? Better plug that phone into the right computer and register it so you move music blah blah!
Lame!
Oh and I use bose sweet sweet noise cancelling headphones. Amaze
i was under the impression everyone hates itunes
I have heaps of mp3s on my phone thanks to years of CDs, so I listen to them when out and about.
But at home, I alternate between Spotify if I just want a mix of whatever for aesthetic music or play vinyls if I want something in particular.
I use XBox Music because I basically live in an all Microsoft world (phone, tablet, computer, console). It works really well between devices and is about $12 a month for all the music you want to download.
I downloaded an album from XBox Music a few months ago; despite the transaction being in AUD, I was charged an international transaction fee, and was all ‘what the very fuck…?’ so now I don’t like them any more.
.mp3 files on my Sony Xperia Play
I buy from Bandcamp whenever possible, but still listen on Spotify.
I use Spotify to discover new music, or just put music on while I fall asleep or something. But if I want something specific, like if I wanna go walking or put music on while I play Forza, then I prefer to have songs downloaded to my laptop/phone.
I know this is specifically regarding music but since I delved deep into the world of podcasts a good couple of years ago my foot-tapping has more or less disappeared.
Except when I’m snowboarding – the tunes come out then because the only thing better than snowboarding is snowboarding to music.
Live!
Seriously, I can’t speak for other cities, but if you live in Melbourne and you love rock, the quality of music in this city at the moment is phenomenal.
I’d personally recommend Child, Seedy Jeezus, Fuck the Fitzroy Doom Scene, Bugdust, Motherslug, Matt Sonic & the High Times, Borrachero, I Am Duckeye (who doesn’t love songs about punching dicks?), The Ugly Kings, Digger & the Pussycats… I could go on and on.
So many great venues catering to every genre whatever your taste every night of the week. Get out there and support it.
I’ve been a Spotify premium member is the past but j just can’t justify the $12 a month. It was better when they had the option to pay $8 and just listen in pc. Now it’s more than bloody Netflix.
My main interests are Surfing and Digital art, so most of my music leads come from there.
*I don’t do the subscription music because my musician mates don’t like the %, and the popular artists are easily bought, per-track, without DRM (so ‘No’ iTunes store).
*random listens via soundcloud, bandcamp, kexp (youtube), npr music (youtube), la blogotheque (youtube), and found quite a lot of good music from fan made music videos on youtube.
-David Letterman show, TVCs have introduced quite a bit of bands I like (the latest being that Travago AUS commercial campaign), and of course the influences of current artists that I liked.
-Channel 2’s Raaaaggeeeee, I’ve kind of outgrown, and it doesn’t help that I don’t have a TV
-FBI radio (Sydney)
-and random buys based on cover image
Favourites are everywhere, we just got to keep an ear out.
Buy (mp3) from Beatport and listen on a physical (Cowon) player or the old version of winamp that still works for me. Still buy a few CDs, but not so much this year, I’m finding. Still listen to older material on CDs, though, and even Vinyl!
JB Now