When driving, how do you listen to "media" to keep yourself entertained? By media, I am not only talking about music, but also news, talk, audiobooks, podcasts, and so on. As far as I can determine, the selections are:
- Terrestrial radio "over the air" (OTA)
- Terrestrial radio via mobile app
- Satellite-delivered radio
- Streaming media via mobile app (e.g. Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, Plex)
- Pre-recorded physical media (CDs, cassette tapes)
- Downloaded media via mobile app (e.g. Audible)
I usually listen to ESPN radio (AM 1430 Fresno) for about the ten minutes it takes me get back and forth from the gym during weekdays. Combined running time and driving to work I listen to about 12 hours (which is about 6 hours driving) of music and podcasts weekly.
YouTube liked videos and maybe their suggested ones. Have a dashboard mount for my phone.
It varies. In local driving, regardless of which car I'm driving, I often turn on WTOP-FM to get the traffic reports because that information is essential for driving around here and their reports are the most available.
Otherwise, it depends on which car we take. In mine, I generally listen to XM or to DVD-Audio discs (many of which I've burned myself to take advantage of that format's high capacity). My wife's cars don't have XM. In her TLX, for shorter trips I generally listen to FM radio and change the station constantly; for longer trips out of town we often plug in an iPod. I haven't yet tried my new high-rez Astell & Kern player in there (it can play DSD).
Satellite radio, Spotify, or Audible.
Most of the time I have my phone plugged into the aux port on my car (my Mazda Atenza does not have bluetooth), but only use it sometimes.
Usually have 648 AM on, which is constant talk and news here in Okinawa, Japan. Mostly listen to this on short journeys (5-10 minutes).
There are some FM stations but most are in Japanese. The English-language channel is one of those non-offense "mix" stations that I find a bit boring, so I don't listen to it hardly ever.
On longer journeys (15+ minutes, give or take), I switch over to aux mode and maybe have a YouTube video going or listen to Spotify.
In no particular order: Over-the-air if I can find something, CDs, iPod. My wife has an old Microsoft Zune where she has stored a lot of music for roadtrips, and she'll listen to that with headphones if I don't want to listen to anything at the time.
Moist of the time I don't listen to media at all; I just crack open the window for some white noise.
I still have MP3s on my phone. Remember those? :P (Actually, a lot of them are actually .ogg files since that's what Linux utilities rip CDs to.) That's what I would listen to on the way to work since I was in no mood for advertising or talk.
Most of the time these days I just listen to local over the air FM radio. I like not having to fiddle with connecting the phone to the car or being tempted to fuss around with skipping songs while I drive.
Old-fashioned, OTA and CDs
Music is almost all via MP3s on a USB stick I reload and tag carefully so that my car can read it properly. Sadly it does not work as well in other cars.
Podcasts over a bluetooth connection, as my new phone does not have a 3.5mm audio jack (really miss the aux capabilities).
AM and FM radio for certain programs (traffic reports, weather info, some NPR/BBC programs).
I've never used the CD function in my car and probably never will. Same with satellite radio.
My personal car doesn't have a true Bluetooth connection, so I use my iPod / AUX, usually on random songs. I have a CD player that usually only plays the one CD-ROM with about 150 MP3 songs on it every now and then, just to make sure it's still working, or if I just bought a disk from the store.
I usually listen to classical music on the radio, when on my way to the airport at 4:30am. On Saturdays the local college plays some 1960s-80s funk/soul/R&B which is not typical fare for radio stations (think: XM Channel 49), so it's fun to listen to that when running errands.
In rentals, I might listen to NPR for about 5-10 minutes to catch up on news, but longer if they're talking about something / someone interesting (Science Fridays, for example). So one week might be 10-20 minutes at most and other times it could be several hours.
There's been a handful of occasions I've streamed the F1 app like a radio play-by-play, if I hadn't had a chance to watch the race live, and then catch up with the highlights in video form when I'm not driving. And a few times, I've started up a really good YouTube video that's really just chat, but really want to hear the rest of it before I forget.
But about 90% of the time, I just listen to my music or even no other sounds at all.
Quote from: MultiMillionMiler on February 27, 2023, 09:47:17 PM
I don't. Music is so horrible/boring today I don't even bother turning the radio on anymore. Wastes my car's battery. I'll usually have a Playlist up on my phone with earjacks that I can just reach to my phone in the phone holder and play if I want.
How is listening to AM/FM band radio even the slightest battery consumption concern? Do you even know what an alternator is?
For context, I'm 21, I just have horribly outdated music tastes like my parents.
I'm still a fan of listening to what's on the airwaves with the old fashioned radio. 97.1 (classic rock) by Chicago is okay, but I prefer to listen to real oldies stations. 87.7 (ME TV-FM) in Chicago, and 100.3 (FONZ-FM) in Milwaukee are great for getting the older music I'm used to listening to. The issue is that not all vehicles (namely the car I drove to Gary, Indiana all last summer) have dials low enough to get 87.7 FM... my dad's van can't get it either with clear tone.
For news, I usually listened to 720 AM (WGN) on my way to and from Gary to get the traffic report while I was driving.
In terms of other media, I used to use mostly cassettes, because they were cheap and a lot of the people I listened to (Steve Miller, Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor) were all on cassettes readily available at Goodwill. After accumulating a large cassette collection, my dad sold the car I was using, and replaced it with one with a CD player. I use CDs for a lot of my music still, ranging from Glen Campbell, to Glen Miller, to Barry Manilow, to the soundtrack CD of Bluey (the children's television show from Australia). CDs are cheap, I'm cheap, it's a match made in heaven!
One of my personal favorites to listen to while driving is C.W. McCall... he wrote a lot of other good driving songs besides Convoy!
Quote from: MultiMillionMiler on February 27, 2023, 09:47:17 PMI don't. Music is so horrible/boring today I don't even bother turning the radio on anymore. Wastes my car's battery. I'll usually have a Playlist up on my phone with earjacks that I can just reach to my phone in the phone holder and play if I want.
What about audiobooks or podcasts? That's why I specified "media" instead of "music" to encompass multiple audio formats.
Although I tend to agree with your sentiment about the modern music, and end up listening to 40s or 50s music, classical, or movie/television/video game soundtracks.
Quote from: Hobart on February 27, 2023, 10:07:46 PMFor context, I'm 21, I just have horribly outdated music tastes like my parents.
Welcome to the club!
Usually the Beatles Channel on SXM, or YouTube playlists of whatever I've been listening to lately (a lot of anime/city pop stuff).
102.1 The Quake (FM radio), or other similar stations when I'm outside of range, such as in Yakima, where you can still hear it, but it's a little broken up. Or somewhere on the west side of the state, which is really out of range and you won't get anything at all. When I'm on my drives, I listen to the music on my USB drive, which is video game music and electronic dance music.
I use a digital audio player, commonly called an MP3 player. My phone would do the same thing, but I like physical buttons so I can control it without looking at it. I like to have my own recordings, so I can listen without an Internet connection. My default setting is to have cellular data turned off, because I don't want to feel constantly tied to a network. I get enough of that at home when my phone is always online through the cable modem.
My musical preferences are somewhat eclectic, so I like having the option of using my own playlist instead of listing to stations or channels. I've never heard a radio station that plays "Ave Maria" and "Habanera" with "Back that Ass Up" and "Pretty Fly" in between. I'm not good at making a list putting songs in order, but I can have selections randomly chosen from my playlist and know that it isn't all going to sound the same, and my 60s music is going to be mostly Animals and Zombies, not Beatles.
In my TL, I use either CDs or my phone connected via USB cable. (The car does have Bluetooth audio but it's notorious for draining the car battery so the fuse is pulled so it doesn't work.) In my Prelude, entirely CD.
If I won't be in the car for more than 15 minutes, FM radio. If longer, I'll plug my phone into the USB port and play music off there.
For me, it's all streaming nowadays with Spotify, both music and podcasts.
I don't have a license yet but normally in the car it's radio for shorter trips and spotify for longer trips.
Interestingly, my car is new enough to have a sound system with Sirius XM Radio and Apple CarPlay yet still old enough to have a CD player in the dash. Both are factory.
When commuting (30-45 minutes each way), I listen to music with Sirius XM Radio - usually 70's on 7, but sometimes I will switch it up with 60's Gold, 80's on 8, Classic Rewind, Classic Vinyl. Yes, I'm an old fogey.
On road trips, either Sirius XM (it is nice not to have to search for new stations when leaving another station's range) or stream from my iPhone through CarPlay. Or if I have a new CD, I may play that - if I haven't had the chance to rip it yet. (I may be a dinosaur here, but I prefer to have my music on physical media that I can hold in my hand, keep in a safe spot at my house, and not on a server somewhere. But that's a discussion for another thread.)
Quote from: dlsterner on February 28, 2023, 12:15:07 AM.... (I may be a dinosaur here, but I prefer to have my music on physical media that I can hold in my hand, keep in a safe spot at my house, and not on a server somewhere. But that's a discussion for another thread.)
I'm pretty sure we've had that discussion in another thread (maybe you weren't part of it, but the discussion has taken place). Several of us agreed with your point in principle and one reason is that we don't want to give someone else control of what we can listen to. That is, it won't surprise anyone here that I don't listen to Taylor Swift, but she's a great example of the issue because I remember a couple of years ago there was a lot of news coverage about her getting into a dispute with Spotify that led her management to pull all her music from said service. If you were a fan of hers who used Spotify as your platform and you didn't buy physical media (or purchase your music via downloads), you were suddenly unable to listen to an artist you liked.
Edited to add: The topic has come up several times. Here's one of the earlier iterations when some of the younger forum members were under the illusion that physical media are unnecessary.
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=22215.msg2304539#msg2304539
Either sports radio or my Spotify playlist.
Short drives: XM or the one single FM sports station I can tolerate
Longer drives: My own music on my phone (for as long as Apple will let me until forcing their own crap service) or XM
FM Radio. Don't care for news or talk radio.
Quote from: roadman65 on February 28, 2023, 09:06:33 AM
FM Radio. Don't care for news or talk radio.
SiriusXM is the best option for me. I just can't get into the Seattle stations the same way I did for the Chicago ones.
Quote from: 1995hoo on February 28, 2023, 07:48:04 AM
Quote from: dlsterner on February 28, 2023, 12:15:07 AM.... (I may be a dinosaur here, but I prefer to have my music on physical media that I can hold in my hand, keep in a safe spot at my house, and not on a server somewhere. But that's a discussion for another thread.)
I'm pretty sure we've had that discussion in another thread (maybe you weren't part of it, but the discussion has taken place). Several of us agreed with your point in principle and one reason is that we don't want to give someone else control of what we can listen to. That is, it won't surprise anyone here that I don't listen to Taylor Swift, but she's a great example of the issue because I remember a couple of years ago there was a lot of news coverage about her getting into a dispute with Spotify that led her management to pull all her music from said service. If you were a fan of hers who used Spotify as your platform and you didn't buy physical media (or purchase your music via downloads), you were suddenly unable to listen to an artist you liked.
Edited to add: The topic has come up several times. Here's one of the earlier iterations when some of the younger forum members were under the illusion that physical media are unnecessary.
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=22215.msg2304539#msg2304539
So, where does that place me? Technically speaking, my music is on a server, but it's my own Plex Media Server (https://markholtz.info/plex) which sits in a closet and the port open for outside connection such as my work computer or my mobile phone. All of my CDs have been ripped to high bitrate MP3 files which are stored on my server so that I can stream my music. Some of those CDs, especially those from La-La Land Records (https://markholtz.info/lalalandrecords), are produced in extremely limited runs which makes them irreplicable. But, because they are on my own server (and backed up), there isn't any possibility of my music going away. The only reason why I'm even subscribed to Apple Music is that it is part of my mobile plan.
If I'm driving < 20ish minutes, I'll just listen to 94.3 FM on the radio. For any longer trip, I'm playing music via Pandora on my phone.
Driving around town, it's FM radio.
On road trips, usually nothing. But occasionally a CD. On especially long trips (like Mexico), we usually put on an Adventures in Odyssey disc or two to help keep the kids entertained (and us awake).
SirusXM. I also have YouTube Premium so I can skip the ads and can hook into Android Auto with that if I want to listen to something else. I rarely listen to regualr radio anymore.
My issues with terrestrial radio have been frequently noted. There are no really good stations in my area that I want to listen to. AM reception is terrible. My favorite talk show host died two years ago. No AM stations in my area carry the host I prefer who's now in that time slot. I dropped XM Radio several years ago for budgetary reasons, and said favorite talk show host was never on satellite radio.
Over the years I went from 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs. My at-the-moment inoperable Saturn Vue has a CD changer and an AUX port, but I've found it easier to use a device that stores more music in a small footprint than multiple CDs in a case.
I have a 160 GB iPod Classic, but the combination of a dead battery in the device and my growing dislike with the touch wheel interface led me to buy a cheap Android phone that will accept a big micro SD card to use as my music player so I have my music on it. I have my CD collection (and tunes downloaded from Napster or Usenet in years past) stored on it and it's backed up in multiple places so if the card craps out, I won't lose anything. I'll just pop the backup card in there and buy another one to use as my new backup.
Streaming services? Nope. They cost money, and cell service is so spotty in my region that it would not be a worthwhile investment or a wise use of my data allocation. Besides, one never knows when some sort of contract dispute will cause a certain artist's music to disappear from that streaming service. And while when I'm at the office I will listen to streaming stations via iHeart, I can't do that while driving because of cell coverage and chewing up data.
I have an old iPhone that I use as a dedicated podcast player, and lately I've listened more to podcasts when driving than anything else. Favorites include political commentators that 50% of the country like, 50% don't, and 100% want to argue about, apparently.
I've never been an audiobook fan. I only have one (on CD) and it was given to me as a gift. I prefer to read a book as to listen to someone else reading a book.
Almost exclusively normal radio (not XM). When it's not that it's a CD.
I mentioned the podcasts I like. Others commented on them.
There are zillions of podcasts out there and not enough hours in the day to listen to all of them. I choose to listen to ones that discuss politics and current events.
When I went out west with my brother a couple of years ago, he spent much of the driving time listening to downloads of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and some hiking podcast.
There are actually some road-related podcasts out there but I generally get plenty of road-related content here.
I snagged a handful of "Dale Jr. Download" podcasts but haven't subscribed, nor have I listened to the ones I downloaded. There are probably enough sports-related podcasts to consume more than 24 hours in a day.
I listen to either music or podcasts downloaded to my iPhone which then plays over the car radio. Mostly music if I'm just driving around town but podcasts if I'm in the car for an hour or more. Nothing overly political though politics seems to sneak into almost everything these days. Star Talk, The Friendly Atheist, Science Friday, 365 Days of Astronomy, and a couple Packers podcasts are my usually go-tos. (I've taken a break from the Packers lately because it's been all Aaron Rodgers all the time.)
YouTube Premium is pretty cool when you are driving. You can listen to anything you want and it creates a playlist and has an endless library of songs. It's like $40 a month for the two (SirusXM and YouTube Premium), not that much money to me.
The radio in my own car is broken, leaving me to listen to music on my phone. I do occasionally ride with others whose cars have working radios, and one of them switches between FM and satellite radio.
Quote from: epzik8 on February 28, 2023, 07:49:48 PM
The radio in my own car is broken, leaving me to listen to music on my phone. I do occasionally ride with others whose cars have working radios, and one of them switches between FM and satellite radio.
I had a car like that at one time. The radio blew out and I'd just use my phone to listen to music.
Roughly even between OTA and recorded (FLAC files from discs I own, on a flash drive)
I have SiriusXM (yay for $99/3 years) also Spotify Premium ($10.99/mo). When I'm in the Phoenix area, I'll listen to terrestrial radio because there's a station there that I really like AND it's the same frequency as one of my Des Moines presets.
For my Seattle to Yellowstone road trip a year and a half ago, I found the perfect balance of music to audio books on a thumb drive. Usually three albums to two 74 minute "chapters" of books. I also went on to radio-locator.com ahead of time to look for AAA, Modern Rock and unusual formats in the bigger cities to try them out for a few minutes before going back to the on-board audio. There is a dance music station in Missoula that I had to check out. I heard Arcade Fire's "Everything Now" on the AAA station in Bozeman, and then I heard it again in line at a cafeteria in the park. It's unusual these days for me to be listening to random music enough to hear the same song twice in such a short time. The rest of the time for daily driving I use older sticks where I built up my collection a few years ago and just listen to them, hearing rarely-heard albums that seem random.
A few years ago in a previous car I had a player that could play MP3s on CD-ROM, and I only had enough capacity to balance LA Theaterworks plays to music on the first two days on a trip out to San Francisco. The way back was all music, and that got terribly boring after a few hours. On long trips you really need to break it up between speech and music.
When driving into places such as Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, I like to check out the new low-powered FMs, mostly out of seeing what kind of range they get and why people are bothering to program them in this streaming age.
Quote from: Fredddie on March 01, 2023, 12:56:28 AMI have SiriusXM (yay for $99/3 years) also Spotify Premium ($10.99/mo). When I'm in the Phoenix area, I'll listen to terrestrial radio because there's a station there that I really like AND it's the same frequency as one of my Des Moines presets.
Are the stations available through Radio Garden (https://markholtz.info/radiogarden)?
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 also don't like using an iPhone for music because you have to use iTunes and keep a synched library around for copying tunes to the phone. That's why I opted to use an Android phone as a music player. All I have to do is drag-copy my tunes to the SD card to get them on the device. I don't have to worry about firing up iTunes and then being sure all the tunes are in the library, or else the ones not in that library will be erased from the device.
I do use an old iPhone as a podcast player, however, because I can download the podcasts straight to the phone via WiFi.
Of course, I still take pictures with a camera because it can do so much more than a phone camera can.
So yeah, on any particular trip, I'll be packing my personal phone, my work phone, my podcast player, my music player, and my digital camera.
I'm still driving an old 1990 Chevy pickup because I can't seem to solve the hybrid system problem in my Saturn Vue. That Chevy was one of the models with the radio and cassette player being separate units, with a tuner-amplifier box behind the dash. I used to use one of those cassette adapters to play external devices via the AUX port, but the cassette deck quit working. Turned out there was something wrong with that amplifier, because I could get no volume out of a plug-in FM Bluetooth adapter. I had been using a portable Bluetooth speaker with an AUX connection, but for some reason the speaker quit working. So I replaced the stereo with a head unit that fits where the cassette deck used to be (there's now a storage pocket where the tuner was in the dash) that has a tuner, Bluetooth, an AUX port, and a USB port for playing a thumb drive only, not for use with an iPhone or iPod. It works great, although I had trouble finding a good AUX cable that didn't generate a lot of noise when it was plugged into the Motorola Android phone. I just need some new speakers; at least one is blown.
I really should have someone take the JVC CD system/USB port that does offer iDevice control out of my old Toyota pickup, which is in non-running condition. That was a good head unit.
I use an iPod that I attach to a set of cheap computer speakers that are on the back seat floor of my car AND the car's OTA radio, with the volumes adjusted for whatever is more interesting at the time. I dislike the idea of a subscription music service as if I let the subscription lapse, all of the 'saved' files go bye-bye and the iPod is like a radio station that only plays stuff that i like. Sometimes the older tech really is better.
Mike
Quote from: hbelkins on March 01, 2023, 12:52:53 PM
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.
My solution to this is to be enough of a pill that nobody ever wants to call, email, or text me.
Back when I was in college, I'd set up an "on the go" playlist on my iPod for trips (this was with an iTrip FM adapter on the Accord, and an aux cable once I got my Civic a little over a year after graduating). Once I graduated, this turned into a mix of FM for the stretch of Thruway between my apartment and where my parents live and the iPod. Around May 2015, however, I switched to just having the sound of the road once out of radio range of my presets. I did set up my music library on my phone with VLC after getting a smartphone just in case I was ever somewhere where I got bored and wanted music, but haven't actually used it in that capacity.
I did start expanding my FM preset system beyond the Rochester-Albany corridor about 5 or so years ago. Buffalo and the Hudson Valley were early additions; starting around a couple years ago, I expanded into the FM 2 presets and covered the rest of the state and some adjoining areas. Here's what it looks like now; aside from expansion, it's been mostly stable, with the changes mainly being 92.9 moving to FM 2, changing my Rochester station a couple times (first to move away from iHeart after Mix 100.5 stopped being 90s to now, and then away from Warm 101.3 after I got sick of two months of Christmas music), and changing my Syracuse station a few times (it took a while to find something good after WMVN became a hip hop station; while I'd prefer if Sunny 102 didn't become Santa 102 for a month or two, the alternatives are worse or don't fit the sections of road without gaps); note that I have 92.3 on both for ease of switching:
FM 1:
1. 92.3 Albany, NY (WFLY)
2. 96.9 Utica, NY (WOUR)
3. 102.1 Syracuse, NY (WZUN)/Springfield, MA (WAQY)
4. 98.9 Rochester, NY (WBZA)
5. 104.1 Buffalo, NY (WHTT)
6. 93.3 Watertown, NY (WCIZ)
FM 2:
1. 92.3 Albany, NY (WFLY)
2. 103.1 Oneonta, NY (WZOZ)
3. 101.7 Binghamton, NY (WLTB)
4. 106.1 Corning, NY (WNKI)
5. 101.1 New York, NY (WCBS)
6. 92.9 Kingston, NY (WBPM)/Burlington, VT (WEZF)
I'm considering adding a couple more "overloads" to fill in gaps and extend the range a bit, but I haven't yet listened to the stations in question in the car and verified coverage area, so they're not officially "in the system" yet:
-92.3: Lebanon, NH (WGXL)*
-106.1: Liberty, NY (WPDA)**
-96.9: Montréal, QC (CKOI)
*This would be an interesting case of "switching" between two stations on the exact same frequency along the VT 11 corridor. Not sure how I feel about that.
**I'm not sure this would actually close the gap on NY 17, and given how out of the way this part of NY 17 is for me, I'm not sure how much I care. There's probably a gap on I-81 too.
simple
with my ears.
:bigass: :awesomeface:
I usually have my car on SiriusXM. I have listened to various Hawkeye and Cyclone sporting events on whichever local AM station carries them. (I'm too lazy to look that info up at the moment.) I believe the station that carries the Hawkeyes also carries the Minnesota Twins. Since SiriusXM usually only has the home team broadcast, I will listen to the terrestrial station if the Twins are on the road. The same goes for the Vikings, but the carrier for the Vikings here in Mason City is an FM station, which is the local rock station.
Quote from: hbelkins on March 01, 2023, 12:52:53 PMI 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.
95% of the time, Spotify via Bluetooth
But occasionally I will listen to the radio, mainly ESPN 1000AM. When SiriusXM does it free 2 weeks I will also listen to that
Quote from: ZLoth on March 02, 2023, 09:10:47 AM
Quote from: hbelkins on March 01, 2023, 12:52:53 PMI 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.
Sometimes the radio, but most of the time, YouTube on my phone via Bluetooth.
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.
Quote from: Road Hog on March 03, 2023, 10:43:02 PMFor 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 (https://markholtz.info/radiogarden). For short trips, it WRR-Dallas over the air.
Short trips: FM radio.
Long trips: CDs.
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.