I think there was a thread similar to this one several years ago, but technology has evolved, so answers might be different:

How do you listen to music?
...  Do you still listen to albums, and if so, what format (vinyl, tape, CD, ???)?
...  Do you still use iTunes for your music (obtaining your music legally, I presume)?
...  Do you find & listen to specific songs on sites like Spotify?
...  Do you use an Internet Radio option?  If so, which one?

A few years ago, I fed >400 CDs into iTunes, but I don't much use it.

I used to use Pandora and create radio stations for favorite performers or songs, but I don't do that anymore:
...  We publishers don't like Pandora because they'd rather pay lawyers than music creators,
...  Pandora has about the smallest collection of songs (see previous comment),
...  But with my current whole house audio setup, Pandora is still easiest to use.

Lately, I've been using Spotify -- I usually create radio stations in Sportify & let the site choose my music.

You?  Tell us why, please.

now days, I mostly just stream via Pandora.

when working, I like to put in a CD to time things, when the CD ends, take a break and walk
around the block, stretch and get some water.

CDs - since I went trough the trouble of loading mine in a 400 disc CD changer.  They play in succession, random, or by programmed list.  And I made cd copies of my traveling music favorites when I'm driving in areas where there's more radio stations with preachers than music.

I don't consume much music anymore. But when I do it's basically three sources:

Radio in my car (or if there's no radio station I like, I stream from my phone)
Music I bought on iTunes (or ripped from my own CDs which I still own)
Streaming from Apple Music (usually on my tv at home but sometimes on my laptop at work)

That's about it.

When I buy music I buy full albums and generally listen to them as such. I can count on one hand the number of single tracks I've ever purchased.

Youtube.

Mostly listen to Amazon Prime Music on the computer. Have a nice sound card and Klipsch speakers so it aint bad. Occasionally use Sony studio monitor headphones. (Late at nite, when I am afraid I will wake the neighbors)

Amazon Prime Music is included with Amazon Prime, no extra charge. It is very similar to Pandora. It has channels, I seem to listen to the Stone Temple Pilots channel, or the Eagles, or Carlos Santana........... When in the mood I will select a particular artist and listen to either albums or individual cuts. Sometimes I just listen to the "decade" channels.

It must have been ten or fifteen years since I bought an actual physical cd.

I no longer even own an fm radio for the house (there is one in the car).

I very occasionally listen to cuts on YouTube. Mostly when I am looking to share music with someone like MM.

I have a nice stereo- Denon receiver, 7.1 surround, with a mix of jbl and klipsch speakers.... Havent turned it on in 6 months.

I consume a ton of music ... I average two new albums every week. Some is purchased, others are streamed or borrowed from the library. Typically I stream for a while, and if I really like it I'll pay for it.

I don't do vinyl anymore, and only by CDs when high-res downloads aren't available; if you're patient, buying the cd online only cost s a few more dollars that buying on iTunes, and usually sounds better - for old music, you can buy used for less.

My office has a music server with about 400 gigs going into a cheap DAC, an Adcom power amp, and a pair of Canton Karat MC-DC50s. My living room goes from an Integra into a pair of old Allison speakers - but they're barely Allisons anymore. I replaced both drivers, and made a new crossover to match.

My shop is whatever stereo amp and speakers I have kicking around, fed from a TV with a Fire Stick. They just have to not suck.

I've been fiddling with speakers for a while now, and recently built a pair as my father's Christmas present. They came out much better than I expected; when you pick all the the parts yourself, it's easy to get something that outperforms commercial speakers, especially in a small room. From here on out, I think I'll be building, not buying.

In 2017, I plan on building some nice bookshelves to replace the Karats in my office, as that room is way too small for them. Most rooms are way too small for them. I already have my drivers picked out

I use Sirius XM in my car and CDs in my stereo system at home.

Ears


Seriously, I love Music it speaks volumes.

SiriusXM through an ONKYO receiver and a pair of vintage 3 way Technics in the House which is on 24/7

Online typically via YouTube in a separate tab as 99% of the time video detracts from the Music, IMO.

Pandora.

I have always found the technology surrounding listening to music in the last 10 or so years to be confusing.

First, you have to spend a bunch of money on a little square thing, then buy songs to put on it. I couldn't tell the little square things apart, or afford one, or know what would work with what computers/devices.

I don't even know how people get music now that I'm not even sure people use square things anymore.

Pandora is easy and it introduces me to new music by artists who have a similar sound/style to genres I like. In the early 2000s, when I was young and had a social life, I discovered new music through friends and because I lived in an area where going to live concerts was affordable. Now, I'm in my 30s, haven't had a social life in years. All my friends who know about music live, literally, 1000 miles away and I won't pay $50 or $100 to go hear a live band up here in the Northeast where leisure activities cost $80 million.

I find that a lot of very simple life pleasures (like listening to music) has become extremely complicated and expensive once they've been effected a lot by computerization. Anything that requires shopping and buying products in order to do whatever simple thing suddenly becomes a negative experience to me. I don't want to have to know about operating systems and tech products in order to go shopping for a gadget that I then have to get someone else to show me how to use, so I can listen to a song.

It's the same thing with e-readers. If I can't just buy a book and go read it, I won't be reading that book

i digitized my entire (huge) cd collection a few years ago, and  ripped them as wav files. i have them all on a home server that i can play through my computer into my stereo. having multiple gmail accounts, i can upload 50k songs for each account to google music play. i use those to stream if i'm on the road etc. by having the multiple accounts, i can separate accounts by genres. i donated all the discs to my local library.

most new purchases have been via hd tracks, where i can download high rez audio flac files. i use foobar as a player for the tunes. it does all the standard stuff, like makes playlists, create cue sheets, etc. for local radio i listen to the npr station, and i have bookmarked a ton of radio stations all over the world that play non-standard--non-commercial--music.

i tried pandora for a while, but found it quite limiting in it's "suggestions" when you pick a particular artist, song, genre. plus, they got rid of one of my favorite "stations" and haven't come up with a suitable replacement.

i bailed on vinyl years ago. the money one would need to spend to hear the almost imperceptible difference between vinyl and digital is/was prohibitive. not to mention the care and space needed for storage. high rez digital is more than adequate as a medium. and any stuff i want to physically have on my phone (i bailed on ipods, mp3 players years ago, too) i can rip to 192 vbr mp3s from my source files.

Usually, if I'm listening to music, I'm listening to the local college jazz station on my car radio. Sometimes I'll listen to that same college jazz station on my computer when surfing or editing. Lately I've been listening on YouTube to what is called "epic" music, especially when I am editing. Pandora, iTunes and other services usually don't have what I'm looking for.

I've found that having a collection of albums (e.g. CDs, even if/when they are added to iTunes) to be inhibiting.  To use your collection...
...  You have to think, gee, I want to hear that XYZ song,
...  You have to go find it,
...  You play it.
It's a bit of an effort for a couple minutes of pleasure.

I like Internet Radio because you can easily pick an artist / song / genre and it'll play not only that artists / song / genre but it will also play new and/or similar music that you haven't heard before.  That's how I hear about new albums from favorite artists and how I learn about new artists to explore.

I like Spotify over Pandora, because...
...  In Spotify, you can view & edit the queue,
...  You can restart a favorite song,
...  It's easy to create playlists,
...  You can view the discology of an artist while the radio station is playing,
...  Spotify has license to much more songs than Pandora.

I listen to either:

Amazon Prime Music through my phone.  The really nice thing is that you can download anything you want (that they have available to Prime members) to play offline.  That way, it doesn't use data when you're away from home.  Very good for driving.  I have a few several-hour-long playlists for different driving moods and passengers (I lay off the NWA and Gwar when the kid is in the car).

Or...

Vinyl that I buy at library book sales.  It takes a lot of searching, but you can sometimes find fun stuff for almost no money.  I tend to buy a lot of Christmas albums, classical, and musicals.

none or all of the above. well, except never got into sat radio or popular internet stations. there are plenty of other net radios on mixzing that are more fun; but that's only on the tablet. the main problem is that i don't "listen" to music unless am seriously, actively listening. ordinarily don't like background music at all.

the old analog system was a teac reel to reel tape machine with dbx on jbl L65 speakers. now, it's through the mackie computer interface or the yamaha aw2400 on the same jbl L65s or yamaha HS 8 studio monitors. fortunately, have always stayed away from loud noise because it just hurt my ears; so my high frequency hearing is still reasonable. and hate the over-emphasized, boomy bass from friends systems.

anyone see "soundbreaking" series on pbs? that was fun. lots of history, inside stories.
http://soundbreaking.com/episodes/

My music consumption these days is mostly via YouTube just to check stuff out and follow recommendations. On those occasions when I find something I must own, I'd say about 90% of that is being sold via bandcamp.

Some of the most mind-blowingly amazing music I've heard in my entire life was created during the last 5 years, and is being merchandised on bandcamp. I've dropped quite a bit of change on that site.

I typically buy/collect vinyl. also I enjoy when bands make odd, limited DIY releases they put out themselves. I still use my iTunes/ipod as well.

Mostly listen to my favorite FM stations on Tune in Radio app on my cell and  Amazon Prime Music
I have a huge mp3 collection and some portions of that are also downloaded on my music player.

Spotify is the shizznit!  It allows you to find artists, make playlists/artists, and create radio stations for yourself.  Unfortunately, it doesn't have all the music that I need as a performer, so anything that I want to use in a dance show I have to buy on iTunes and put on an MP3 player.  But still, I find a lot of music through Spotify, or YouTube if Spotify doesn't have it.

Also my car has a CD player so I will burn myself CDs if it is something I think I will want to listen to many times in the long run.  Formerly I would listen to records when I was in the mood for obscure vintage recordings, but my record player broke recently, which brought my hipsterdom to a screeching halt

I usually listen in the nude.

The way I listen to music is split about 80% digital and 20% analog.

On the analog side, I listen to vinyl albums on a Linn Sondek LP12 turntable through a Rega phono stage and fed into a Woo Audio WA-6 tube headphone amp. I buy most of my vinyl from local used record stores or from other vinyl lovers on Discogs.

On the digital side, I use a PS Audio Sprout integrated amp as the DAC with a MacBook Pro feeding the DAC from the USB port of the Mac. The DAC is then fed into the same Woo Audio headphone amp as the turntable. I use a Decware Zen audio switch-box to switch the source feeding into the headphone amp between the turntable and the DAC. For headphones I use a 10-year old pair of Sennheiser HD-600 headphones.

A couple of things I recently began using for playing digital music has gotten me very excited about digital music again. The first thing is a digital music application called Roon. It's sort of like iTunes but much better. What I really like about Roon is how it uses the metadata from your digital music files to present you with a very visual and informational experience about every music artist and album in your digital music library. If you happen to be someone who misses the experience of buying vinyl albums and reading all of the liner notes, song lyrics, and other info that came with it, Roon gives you back that experience (and more!) for your digital music files. I won't try to describe here everything Roon does because I won't be able to do it justice. Here is a link to a great overview of Roon.

http://www.techhive.com/article/2923915 … -fans.html

The other thing that has me excited about digital music again is Tidal. Tidal is a subscription-based streaming music service like Spotify, except that it streams music in CD-quality audio. What’s really great is that Tidal and Roon work together seamlessly so I can listen to an album from my own music library and then explore related artists and titles on Tidal with Roon guiding me through the process of exploration based on what it knows about my musical tastes from my own music library. Once I paired Roon with Tidal it was like being set free for the very first time and discovering a world of music out there that I didn’t even know existed.

Not as much as I used to, was always on Spotify/Lastfm making notes of songs. Now just Shazam then youtube songs I like.

i have mp3s on phone. sometimes i will stream on pandora. i also have a alarm with radio. i also have mp3s on my desktop