ISO advice, a way to listen to albums/podcasts on the road

[RoundTheBend]

I almost forgot:

My wife uses like 4GB on FaceCrack or InstaWasteLife a month... I really don't. Just emails, sometimes some YouTube/video chat, but like 80% streaming music and I use only 2-3GB a month (I have unlimited, so it really doesn't matter).

But if that matters, like I mentioned, you can just download your content to your phone (I got a $20 64GB SSD card or something), and then you turn on "stream only using WiFi" or whatever it so you don't accidentally do so, and you have 64GB worth of music just chillin on your phone.

I'll create a playlist of my music projects (like a baroque playlist) and it's like 50 albums or something before it is near full.

Also I feel ya on the decision making process - it wasn't really easy and like I said I just settled for Spotify. It meets the basic needs for sure and playlist management I like, but neither is it great and often feel the streaming is subpar quality.

[Jimmy Dread]

Can't comment on podcasts, but for listening to albums in the car I swear by my iPhone. But this is where I differ from probably 99% of users on here - I don't use Spotify or Apple Music or any of the equivalent streaming services. My entire digital library consists of CD rips or albums 'obtained' in mp3 format (320kbps ideally) and stored on my phone via iTunes - luckily I've got a 256GB version otherwise this wouldn't be practical. I then bark instructions at Siri when I want to change what I'm listening to (thus avoiding getting pulled over by the fuzz for using my phone at the wheel). This has obvious issues when I'm trying to listen to something in Welsh, Swedish or Portuguese, but aside from that it's pretty effective.

I've never been a huge fan of streaming services personally - guess it's the collector/old git inside me - but I can see their advantages. But then having 1000 LPs available to listen to without data usage being an issue or making a playlist of stuff you've got remotely stored for driving has always worked for me. And if I'm not in the mood to listen to a specific playlist or an LP from start to finish I just stick the thing on shuffle.

On a related topic (although I'm not sure how it connects or what the data use charges would be), the Amazon Echo Auto might be worth a look if you listen to most of your music via streaming...
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'Reggae' & t'ing
Folk 'n Stuff
SHAMELESS RECORD DEALER PLUG

[carpents]

[carpents]

OK, so I put together my complaints for a RYMer who was trying to create his own app, updated after spending a month with Deezer & Apple Music (and Amazon Unlimited):

(1) Spotify's "add to queue". This adds the song to play next, in the middle of what is already playing. UPDATE: Deezer has two buttons (1) Add to Queue, which properly adds a song to the end of what is playing; (2) Play Next, which properly plays a song next!

(2) Artists who have a shared/common name. In addition to poor searching capabilities (try finding the post-rock band named "Tone", it's harder than it should be) but the worst part is after finding the right artist, it shows the wrong albums! (Seriously, you couldn't add an "artist ID" field to your database?) The band "Sophia" is a good example, you will see their albums and a bunch from other artists named Sophia.

(3) Would it really be so hard to add columns so that I can sort by what I want? How about # of plays? UPDATE: Deezer has a sort option by # of plays, but they still don't have proper columns for sorting. I guess Apple Music does have this.

(4) Some albums have gapless playback between songs. Every song isn't a single. None of these streaming services do gapless playback correctly.

(5) iTunes/Apple Music. I have an iPhone, and use iTunes on my PC. When I activated Apple Music, it started uploading my whole library. Why? Now all my local files are floating around Apple's cloud somewhere? Why? This is just stupid and invasive for no reason. My audio memos that I have on my computer are no business of Apple, and it's obnoxious. Then I receive an email indicating that "my iCloud is 50% full" and it mentions my photos?? Ugh. DELETE.


I have more, but this is getting me tired. Can't one of you please invent a new streaming service designed for people who listen to music? I'll buy a family account.
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Some New Ordeal (Spotify/iTunes/Deezer)

[RoundTheBend]

@ Jimmy - slightly off topic, do you rip your vinyl?

[rkm]

I’ve got s large collection of CD’s and Vinyl, but for on the go I’ve totally embraced streaming. I prefer Apple Music over Spotify.

One of our cars has an 1/8th inch aux input, so I just connect an iPad to that. I could download what I want to listen to before leaving the home wifi, but I’ve got more than enough data limit on my cellular plan to cover all the listening I do.

Our other car is a beater, and the stereo doesn’t work. I don’t want to put any money into it, so I simply grab a bluetooth speaker from home and stick it on the dash. I wouldn’t mind finding a bigger and better sounding Bluetooth speaker, as this is a really neat solution in a lot of circumstances. I sometimes take it down to the garage if I need some cave time under the guise of working on something, and get some listening done there.

[Jimmy Dread]

[rkm]

Is anyone here streaming there own music library from a cloud, via another app?

I’ve been thinking about this lately, because while I’m happily using Apple Music, I’ve continued maintaining an Apple Lossless iTunes library offline at home. I’ve got about 1500 Albums there, that I know sound better than Spotify or Apple Music streaming. It sounds exactly like the 1500 CDs on the shelves.

The whole library is about 500GB. So, for me the cloud storage costs are prohibitive. Plus, the cellular data usage would go up considerably (but, I’m often connected to other wifi at different places of work, so it’s not that big of a deal).

As a collector, the dream is to take MY library with me everywhere I go.

[RoundTheBend]

[rkm]