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How do you listen to your music?
dodos
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm listening to my iTunes library on Shuffle right now and it seems as if Shuffle doesn't necessarily do it's job. Shuffle favors a more listened to group of songs from the same artist, so if you were hoping to listen to many artists or a single, your chances are small.
Thought I should start a thread asking how the people that read these forums go about listening to their music.
Are you always on Last.fm or Pandora? Do you have tons of playlists that fit your mood? Or is it just the iTunes Shuffle for you?
Thought I should start a thread asking how the people that read these forums go about listening to their music.
Are you always on Last.fm or Pandora? Do you have tons of playlists that fit your mood? Or is it just the iTunes Shuffle for you?
dodos on
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And I listen to my music quietly, I only turn up the volume if I'm listening to Year Zero by NIN or I've smoked some weed.
edit: Also, loudly. Very little music sounds correct when played at low volumes.
I figure if I like an artist enough to want to enjoy their work, I should do my best to enjoy it the way they wanted to present it to me, which means listening through the album in order. Not every artist pays attention to the sequence of tracks, but when they do, the resulting complete album is much greater than just the sum of its parts. The meaning or significance of any single song can be drastically enhanced by its position within the larger work, and when you just flip things on shuffle... well, call me an elitist snob, but I think you enjoy the music at a shallower level that way. Instead of listening to a song as part of something bigger, you're just listening to the song on its own.
That said, I do just that myself the other 10% of the time I listen to music. I'll load up a playlist in Foobar of whatever I feel like listening to right then, or I'll burn a CD - I just made myself a little "WOO LET'S CLEAN THE KITCHEN" mix CD of The Thermals, The Wrens, and Heatmiser, and it's great for when I just want to rock out while doing chores.
Still, for the most part, it's albums for me, the way the artists intended.
I prefer Last.fm, but even that gets a little old sometimes.
I'm just not much for the whole "feed me random music based on my tastes" paradigm, mostly because my tastes are so eclectic. I'd rather listen to the best artists from 12 different genres than the 12 best artists from one genre.
Also, I
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I too like listening to an album in order because I know that artists debate heavily on which songs go before others (well, the artists that have the luxury of controlling that order), but I always feel that when I'm going through an entire album, I'm missing out on some of my music. I hate the fact that I have collected all this music in my library but most of it won't catch a listen because it's hard to single certain songs out. That's why I don't own a 500GB iPod, I could never be able to manage all of my music on-the-go.
ITunes just isn't a very good program. Anyway I generally tend to either use a playlist of all of my music on shuffle and sometimes i'll queue up certain songs when I feel the need to hear them. Or i'll set my playlist to play the most recent songs that have been placed on my computer in the last two weeks or a month or so and shuffle through that.
When I do that I also like to pick fairly contrasting albums - say, one Queens of the Stone Age album, one NiN album, and one Fiona Apple album. But that's just me.
The only playlist I have on my iPod is some quiet songs I put on when I'm going to sleep.
I never just go onto Pandora and just chill and listen to music. Like Feral said, there's just way too much shitty music that'll pop up that you have to skip. Whenever I get on, I get on with the mindset "Let's go find some new fucking music", and only listen to the songs that it puts out that I like if it's a band I've never heard. Then I'll write down all the artists I heard that I liked, go get their entire discography, and listen to them on iTunes just like I do with the rest of my music. Then I'll further cut out a lot of those songs, because a lot of the time it turns out the only good song that band has was the one I heard on Pandora.
Very very true. I like Last.fm's recommended artists and then I check their popular songs out on either songza.com or seeqpod.com
I have to ask as well, and let this be an additional question to the OP:
How do you guys go about putting music on your portable devices? Some just have 160GB iPods and make it into a portable library but I feel that's too much to manage. What do you do with an 8GB? 4GB?
I have an 8G Nano.
It contains about 6G of my favorite albums evar, plus about 2G of whatever new music I'm listening to right now.
On very rare occasion do I feel constrained by that. Usually, though, I don't need more. I don't need to carry my whole library with me, because if I haven't listened to an album since 2002, I'm unlikely to get a bug up my ass to listen to it right now.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Other times I have an Ipod playlist that takes everything I've rated 3+ stars, eliminates everything I've listened to in the last x days (I think its 20) and pulls up a random hour or so worth. The nice thing is is refreshes semi-dynamically (when I finish the list).
Other times I listen to "unlistened" or a couple of genre specific playlists. Pandora and Last.fm don't work that well for me.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Also, I'd say iTunes is a very good program for casual listeners such as myself.
At home, unless I think of something specific I want to listen to, I normally put everything (~28GB) into a playlist and hit shuffle. I've also got some program called MusicIP Mixer and a Winamp plugin that create a mix based on a track and you can choose the variation in style/tempo/etc. That's also handy for choosing a specific length/size playlists for mp3 players.
Both programs have to scan all your music first to create a fingerprint for each track and that can take a while if you've got a lot.
Have you tried changing the Smart Shuffle to less likely? (its under preferences->playback)
Yes, it makes the smallest of differences.
I use Itunes exclusively, but after yesterday I think I need a change.
Anyway, I have 2 main playlists in itunes "Sleepy Times" and "Workout", where i basically shuffle all my slow and sleepy songs, and my rock songs. Aside from that, I will always go by my mood. I'll use songs or albums that enhance my mood. If i'm gloomy or sad, I'll straight up listen to sad shit. If i'm feeling great, feel good music.
Shit, the other night I put one song on repeat for like an hour while driving...that was interesting. Do you guys ever just get a MAD craving for a song or album? Happens to me all the time. Lately I've been on this thing with Thirteenth Step ( a perfect circle ), and if your high, it really enhances the entire experience.
Lastly, does anyone recommend a good audio player with a good equalizer. It seemed to me yesterday that I could BARELY hear the vocals coming through on itunes. Dunno if anyone has similiar problems, but it was buggin me b/c I just noticed it and I don't think it was that way before.
I like my musid fairly loud, I have to remember to turn the car stereo down when I Leave it or my husband starts sweraring when he starts the car! Some music has to be loud to really appreciate it, Allgero and Passacaglia from BSG and pretty much anything from Rimsky comes to mind.
I also admit to being a music slut as my husband calls it. I listen to top forties and some old favorites. i very rarley have a whole album unless it is an artist I really like. Battlestar sound tracks and Nelly Furtado off the top of my head.
If you're a shuffle advocate and enjoy a different genre of songs, I highly recommend the new Girl Talk - Feed the Animals album that you can download for free from their website.
For background music, I put albums together based on genre, my mood, and the activity. Right now at this very moment I'm listening to Foo Fighters discography, Nirvana discography, some Motorhead, QotSA, The Stranglers, and Radiohead; these artists work easily together.
As far as music on the move, I have a 500mb iPod Shuffle (one of the old ones that don't look bad). It'll hold anywhere between 5 and 10 albums in high quality. It would be nice to get a bigger iPod simply for the variety, but my laptop isn't usually far away from me so I can either switch out songs or listen to music right on there.
edit: and I usually grab an album for the car ride, too.
If I am near WiFi, that streaming is often done via my N810 internet tablet, which also has access to the many gigs worth of stuff that stays at home thanks to Orb.
As I don't yet have a decent phone(can't tether), car trips limit me to what I can carry with me. About 4 gigs worth of music on flash cards and travel 2.5 inch hdd with a good bit of music and more than a few audiobooks. For more active stuff, I'm resigned to just the smc.
Now that I have more income and an iPod that holds 30gb I find myself still preferring to listen to an entire album. In fact, I'm more likely to listen to something I can listen to every track, instead of something that only has a few highlights.
Recently, however, circumstances have forced a change; I’ve been using a portable player, which means either albums or specific tracks. Random play is not an option due to library:portable ratios.
I want to keep this rolling, I really like this discussion.
EDIT: Stilist, it's possible. If you do a Party Shuffle on iTunes and just keep refreshing it and then throw a completely random list of songs on the portable player you should be set.
I used to listen to Pandora to find new music but now I can't because I'm a foreigner.
Whenever I listen to individual tracks, I feel like I'm taking them out of context. Kind of irrational, I know.