How do you listen to media when driving?

[hbelkins]

I guess I'm a bit old-fashioned, but I don't like using my phone for listening to audio. If a notification comes in -- a phone call, an e-mail alert, a text message, etc. -- then it temporarily mutes whatever is being played back.

I actually went into the notification settings of many of my apps and switched them to "silent" if not turning them off altogether. There are some apps that need my attention. Letting me know of a new book or a deal isn't one of them.

I keep most notifications off -- audio and visual. But it's kinda hard to do for some things, such as your work email account.

[golden eagle]

Sometimes the radio, but most of the time, YouTube on my phone via Bluetooth.

[Road Hog]

As recently as 2013 I was in the dichotomous position of downloading songs to iTunes – and recording them to cassette tape, as that was what my old vehicle had. Not even a CD player.

For a while I was in the sweet spot of having a car with an aux hookup and an iPhone with a jack. Now I have to have a dongle to attach to my phone and I haven't gotten there yet. Hopefully this year I'll get a pickup with all the modern bells and whistles – and a phone to match. In the meantime I do have a CD player and I can still burn discs to listen to, but that'll go away once that laptop dies. My newest laptop won't even take CDs.

[ZLoth]

For a while I was in the sweet spot of having a car with an aux hookup and an iPhone with a jack. Now I have to have a dongle to attach to my phone and I haven't gotten there yet. Hopefully this year I'll get a pickup with all the modern bells and whistles – and a phone to match. In the meantime I do have a CD player and I can still burn discs to listen to, but that'll go away once that laptop dies. My newest laptop won't even take CDs.

When I was car shopping for a new-ish vehicle (1 year old, and I ended up getting a Chevy Malibu) vehicle in 2006, my big concern at that time was having a CD player so that I could play my copied CD-Rs while driving. That CD player stopped working, so rather than fixing it (at a cost of over $100), I ended up having a FM modulator installed and hooked up directly to radio's antenna input for clearer audio from a portable CD player or my smart phone which, at the time, still had a earphone jack. I did try a small FM transmitter that plugged into the cigarette lighter, but it was HORRID.

Nine months after having the FM modulator installed, I was rear-ended and the car totaled. In the eight years between 2006 and 2014, smart phones came out and Bluetooth became standard on all but the lowest models of cars, and I made Bluetooth a requirement. While my car also has a CD player, it is never used, but the Bluetooth is used constantly, whether it is a audiobook, streaming music from my Plex server, or streaming classical music from WRR-Dallas via the RadioGarden. For short trips, it WRR-Dallas over the air.

[Ned Weasel]

Short trips: FM radio.
Long trips: CDs.

[hbelkins]

On my recent trip with my brother, he listened to:

Music on a USB stick plugged into a port on the factory radio of his Mazda.

Podcasts saved to his iPhone

Podcasts playing on his iPhone via his cell connection.

XM Radio.

AM radio.