AARoads Forum

I thought I would ask how you "consume media" when you are traveling more than a few minutes. For purposes of this thread, I'm throwing a wide net and defining media as being either music, audiobooks, podcasts, dramas, or what have you. If you are listening to a radio station through a mobile app (e.g. RadioGarden), that is considered Streaming media, not Over-The-Air Terrestrial Radio.

Since I self-host my media including music and audiobooks and I have unlimited data on my mobile plan, I'm listening primarily to audiobooks while driving, and am streaming them from my own server to my phone.

The sound of the road only.

Only if we start getting drowsy will we turn on the radio or pop in a CD.

Occasionally it's streamed media, but more often it's downloaded as our long drives tend to be in the mountains where we'll lose service.

Podcasts and audiobooks through my phone, connected via Bluetooth, is my primary choice for long and uninterrupted stretches. For shorter hops, I'm putting on music from my USB drive that is plugged into the car, or finding a local radio station with normal music or news.

I have about 20 preset SXM channels and I continuously go through them. Music only.

A lot of places I go are radio and cellular dead zones.  Some peace and quiet never bothered me much.  I do listen to a lot of AM Sports radio when available though.

A mix of music downloaded to my smartphone, and news and sports programming on SXM satellite radio. Better than having to search out terrestrial radio programming in unfamiliar territory, though I'll do that to get traffic reports when in or approaching major metro areas (something that's mostly disappeared from SXM after the Sirius/XM merger).

I don't stream anything. On rare occasions in local driving I might play something I downloaded to my phone, but as a general matter I don't have much music on my phone. I mostly listen to music either on XM radio or on CD/DVD-Audio (depending on which car I'm driving), though sometimes I'll tune in sports on XM as well. I seldom listen to FM radio except in local driving when I want to tune in the traffic reports on WTOP. For long-distance driving I generally don't know which stations have traffic reports and I'm not usually inclined to scan everything to find one.

One of my wife's cars has a hard drive onto which CDs can be ripped, but she hasn't ripped very many to it, in part because she finds it hard to select music from that system while driving (I agree with her). On some longer trips we have instead plugged in an iPod, although that suffers from the same problem many more times over.

A mix of my personal music collection, streaming media that I can't purchase, and radio. As a radio fan I do enjoy the local flair of different stations, although obviously corporate consolidations have eliminated a lot of that in recent years.

I do have a SXM subscription, but I found on my California trip in 2023 that it started to get very stale for longer multiday trips vs. regional day trips. A lot of the news/talk channels rerun the same small handful of programs throughout the day, and by nighttime there is very little live or first-run programming airing.

My downloaded stuff is largely podcasts that I have subscriptions to, so Spotify auto-downloads it.

Quote from: 1995hoo on March 06, 2025, 04:13:56 PMFor long-distance driving I generally don't know which stations have traffic reports and I'm not usually inclined to scan everything to find one.

There are a few metros where I know where to get traffic/weather reports, like Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New York City.

Mainly Spotify these days (mostly podcasts and music).  If NASCAR is racing, I will try to listen to PRN/MRN via the NASCAR app.

Quote from: oscar on March 06, 2025, 04:33:30 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on March 06, 2025, 04:13:56 PMFor long-distance driving I generally don't know which stations have traffic reports and I'm not usually inclined to scan everything to find one.

There are a few metros where I know where to get traffic/weather reports, like Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New York City.

In today's world, it should be easy enough to be able to find that information via a Google search or similar before beginning one's trip. I just generally forget to do so.

Stream YouTube with Firefox/Ublock

It depends on where I am and who I'm with. I like terrestrial radio because it feels like I have more of a connection to the places that I'm traveling through. It's fun listening to the ads in some city I'm not familiar with, hearing mom-and-pop stores giving out addresses I have no clue where they are. If I can't find anything good on the radio, I have a bunch of MP3s on my phone that I'll listen to instead. If I'm with my wife, she'll usually try and stream something, often a podcast but sometimes music.

Now that that's out of the way...am I the only one who kind of hates the terminology of "consuming" media? For one thing, with the pedantic-AARoads-user hat on, you're not consuming anything because the media is still there after you're done experiencing it. For another, a lot of the people who put out music, books, film, etc. consider themselves artists and the thing they're putting out to be a work of art. It kind of debases the work as a piece of art to use the same terminology you'd use to describe something like a box of dishwasher detergent or a block of store-brand cheese. If I put out something for a mass audience, I would do it because I hoped people would like it and find meaning in it, not because I wanted them to think about it like something they got at the grocery store and accidentally left in the back of the fridge until it wilted.

SiriusXM music, or sometimes a live sports broadcast, streamed via the phone app.  I dropped their satellite service some time ago.  When the streaming fails (happens sometimes in Nevada or in the Sierra Nevada) I go with "sound of the road only".

I have barely listened to terrestrial radio at all since I got XM, pre-Sirius merger, fairly early on (2005 or so).

Quote from: 1995hoo on March 06, 2025, 04:13:56 PMFor long-distance driving I generally don't know which stations have traffic reports and I'm not usually inclined to scan everything to find one.

I have lived in Dallas for six years now, and I don't even know which stations have traffic reports. Then again, I'm relying on Google Maps for traffic reports, and I'm rarely on the road during commute hours.

Quote from: Scott5114 on March 06, 2025, 05:40:08 PMNow that that's out of the way...am I the only one who kind of hates the terminology of "consuming" media?

If you got a better word choice, please let me know. The purpose of the poll isn't the type of media you are listening to, but rather the method of how you receive it. As you can imagine, certain types of media such as audiobooks wouldn't work in a broadcast situation, but listening to it while commuting to/from work that is 45 minutes away is perfect. Either you pay for the product, or you are the product (target audience) for advertising.

Depends on the car.

Acura TL: downloaded music (phone connection through USB) or CDs
Honda Prelude: CDs
Lexus GS: radio currently not working, but the replacement aftermarket unit I have (but haven't installed yet) has CD and USB function.

Quote from: 1995hoo on March 06, 2025, 04:13:56 PMI seldom listen to FM radio except in local driving when I want to tune in the traffic reports on WTOP. For long-distance driving I generally don't know which stations have traffic reports and I'm not usually inclined to scan everything to find one.

I'm rarely driving anywhere I need to know the traffic report and, in the rare case I'd find it useful, I wouldn't really know a good alternate route anyway.  But, beyond that ...

Quote from: Scott5114 on March 06, 2025, 05:40:08 PMI like terrestrial radio because it feels like I have more of a connection to the places that I'm traveling through. It's fun listening to the ads in some city I'm not familiar with, hearing mom-and-pop stores giving out addresses I have no clue where they are.

... I also kind of enjoy the act of flipping through radio stations in an unfamiliar area.  If my wife and I are getting drowsy and want to turn on the radio, we might feel like finding a station with country music or contemporary Christian music or 80's and 90's stuff, but we have no clue what stations have what we're looking for and flipping through them isn't just a keep-us-awake part of the process, but it has its own sort of appeal.  When we discover that 90.3 FM is the Acme Christian Radio Network affiliate in Anytown, it makes me feel just a little bit connected to the Anytown area, even if we're just driving through on our way somewhere else.

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Quote from: Scott5114 on March 06, 2025, 05:40:08 PMam I the only one who kind of hates the terminology of "consuming" media? For one thing, with the pedantic-AARoads-user hat on, you're not consuming anything because the media is still there after you're done experiencing it. For another, a lot of the people who put out music, books, film, etc. consider themselves artists and the thing they're putting out to be a work of art. It kind of debases the work as a piece of art to use the same terminology you'd use to describe something like a box of dishwasher detergent or a block of store-brand cheese. If I put out something for a mass audience, I would do it because I hoped people would like it and find meaning in it, not because I wanted them to think about it like something they got at the grocery store and accidentally left in the back of the fridge until it wilted.

But we also speak of "devouring" a good book or "tearing through" a movie trilogy.  Both of those terms are similar to "consuming", in that they hyperbolically imply material destruction.  To me, it's natural that a word closely related to eating is used for something that we 'ingest' through our eyes or ears.

Spotify. Either podcasts or music.

iPhone through speakers via aux cord. If I could afford SiriusXM it'd be that.

My personal tradition when making the 3-hour slog from Shreveport to Lafayette was to play a System of a Down CD the whole way. There were no radio stations of note the entire way other than the outset where Shreveport had a pretty good album rock station.

There's no way I could just raw-dog it and listen to the pavement.

I'm almost always listening to music when I drive. I voted "physical media/tapes and CDs" -but the physical media I use is a solid state hard disc loaded with almost my entire music collection. I have several hundred CDs I ripped in LCPM WAV format. I made copies as high bit rate MP3 files; I wish the system in my truck could play FLAC lossless files. FLAC files are equal to CD quality, but have the advantage of being able to hold metadata, album cover art, etc. Uncompressed WAV files can't do that.

I still have a Sirius|XM subscription (for the time being); I listen to it most often on the daily commute and other shorter drives. The audio quality is inferior to a 320kbs MP3 file or a 706kbs FLAC file. Long drives allow listening to entire albums. The SSD gets cued up for that.

I can stream music from my phone to my truck's stereo system via Bluetooth, but it just doesn't sound as good as the SSD hard wired into a USB port. There is something about the Bluetooth connection that is altering the audio quality and I don't like it.

I have an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription, but mainly use that when I'm at work or at the gym. I would only use it on the road if I knew I wasn't going to be driving through any mobile phone service dead zones. Streaming Amazon Music while driving thru Northern New Mexico doesn't work so well.

For anyone playing music thru a USB memory stick, I think it's worth the extra money to get a solid state hard disc. The little memory sticks may be cheap, but they have serious limitations. They're far slower than a SSD. And a car stereo system may "see" only so many song files on a memory stick. I tried giving my brother a 128GB USB memory stick loaded with a bunch of my music. His stereo system would read only so many of the folders on the memory stick. Dividing it up on multiple 32GB sticks worked better. Did the same test with a solid state drive: his stereo system was able to read the entire thing, despite the SSD having a lot more music stored on it.

Quote from: Scott5114I like terrestrial radio because it feels like I have more of a connection to the places that I'm traveling through. It's fun listening to the ads in some city I'm not familiar with, hearing mom-and-pop stores giving out addresses I have no clue where they are.

I rarely listen to broadcast radio anymore. That especially goes for any of the so-called "local" stations here in the Lawton area. It's the same 10 songs on infinite repeat for months on end, punctuated with lots and lots of commercials.

Years ago I used to tune in the Amarillo College's radio station during my road trips from Oklahoma to Colorado; they played a lot of interesting alternative rock music -often things I hadn't heard before. The station is still around, but they play more of a mix of different genres now.

Quote from: Bobby5280 on March 06, 2025, 09:22:29 PMI rarely listen to broadcast radio anymore. That especially goes for any of the so-called "local" stations here in the Lawton area. It's the same 10 songs on infinite repeat for months on end, punctuated with lots and lots of commercials.

Years ago I used to tune in the Amarillo College's radio station during my road trips to Colorado; they played a lot of interesting alternative rock music -often things I hadn't heard before. The station is still around, but they play more of a mix of different genres now.

Las Vegas has a college radio station, KUNV, that plays a decent mix of jazz "and more" (which is mostly your typical classic rock fare). On Sunday afternoons they play Hawaiian music. It is an independent (non-NPR) public radio station, so it does run a few ads, but not as many as a commercial radio station.

Beyond the music, I appreciate it as a link to Las Vegas culture, as I still don't have a whole lot of friends here to experience it with. You get an interesting perspective on the city based on asides from the DJs and the prerecorded bumpers. (One easy takeaway: Las Vegas hates road construction with a burning passion, far more than other cities I'm familiar with.)

I would have done this as a checkbox poll rather than a radio button (pun not intended) one since for me it varies by where I am and day/time.  I always listen to FM radio when I'm in range of one of my presents, so I guess that's the best option for me, but when outside of range, it varies.  Usually, it's just the sound of the road, but there are times when I'll hook up my phone via the aux cable; I've done that to stream the All Access Star Trek podcast, the weekly broadcast of Throwback 2K on Wink106.1, and the Fly Morning Rush (via Fly92.3 online) one Friday morning (I like their on-deck party mix and the throwbacks they play in the "Fly Pod" for the last hour of the morning show on Fridays).  I do have my library of downloaded MP3s on my phone as well, though I've never felt the need to play them in the car (although that would probably be easier if I had playlists set up).

My current preset system:
FM 1:
1. 92.3     Albany, NY (WFLY)
2. 105.5    Little Falls, NY (WSKU)
3. 93.1     Syracuse, NY (WNTQ)/Springfield, MA (WHYN)
4. 98.9     Rochester, NY (WBZA)
5. 104.1    Buffalo, NY (WHTT)/Boston, MA (WWBX)
6. 93.3     Watertown, NY (WCIZ)

FM 2:
1. 92.3     Albany, NY (WFLY)
2. 92.9     Kingston, NY (WBPM)/Burlington, VT (WEZF)
3. 101.1    New York, NY (WCBS)
4. 103.1    Oneonta, NY (WZOZ)
5. 101.7    Binghamton, NY (WLTB)
6. 106.1    Corning, NY (WNKI)/Liberty, NY (WPDA)/Claremont, NH (WHDQ)/
            Ottawa, ON (CHEZ)

Other:
   96.9     Montréal, QC (CKOI)*

*This was originally FM 1 preset 2 along with WOUR from Utica, NY, but I've since changed that preset (I haven't liked WOUR as much since they were bought by Townsquare Media a few years back (especially the all-talk syndicated morning show; thankfully, I wasn't usually driving through during morning AM hours), but the straw that broke the camel's back was when they reduced their operating power something around Christmas.  I thought it was a temporary technical issue, but when it was still like that on Martin Luther King Day, I switched the preset, as the reduced power resulted in a 15 mile radio-free gap on the Thruway.  I like CKOI enough that I wanted to leave the note, but realistically, I don't feel like I go north of the border enough to adjust FM 2 to put it back on officially; it would be easy to delete the second listing of WFLY, move 2 and 3 down, and make it preset 3, but having WFLY on both makes switching easier.  If the situation changes, I can revisit this.

Quote from: Scott5114 on March 06, 2025, 05:40:08 PMNow that that's out of the way...am I the only one who kind of hates the terminology of "consuming" media?

I don't like references to "consumers" in general.  It reduces everything to economics, as if other considerations don't matter.

Quote from: Road Hog on March 06, 2025, 08:52:07 PMMy personal tradition when making the 3-hour slog from Shreveport to Lafayette was to play a System of a Down CD the whole way. There were no radio stations of note the entire way other than the outset where Shreveport had a pretty good album rock station.

There's no way I could just raw-dog it and listen to the pavement.

Do you go to the party to have a good time?

For me, I usually bring a handful of CDs on longer trips, and I switch between those and terrestrial radio depending on my mood and if there's a good station in the area. I would stream a lot more music if my car's Bluetooth system worked like it's supposed to, but fixing that would mean either a trip to the dealership or attempting a manual software update, and I haven't been bothered to do either.

Quote from: kphoger on March 06, 2025, 07:08:15 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on March 06, 2025, 04:13:56 PMI seldom listen to FM radio except in local driving when I want to tune in the traffic reports on WTOP. For long-distance driving I generally don't know which stations have traffic reports and I'm not usually inclined to scan everything to find one.

I'm rarely driving anywhere I need to know the traffic report and, in the rare case I'd find it useful, I wouldn't really know a good alternate route anyway. ....

No doubt part of this is a function of where one lives. Living in the DC area, I've long found that it's essential to know multiple routes to get anywhere and to be able to change routes in a pinch when something happens. The other factor that makes the traffic reports important is the Potomac River—if I'm headed into DC, there are a limited number of bridges available. Had I been headed into the city yesterday morning, which for me would have most likely meant going to Union Station to catch the train to New York, it would have been essential to know that a car fire on the Virginia side was bogging down the traffic so that I could have both left earlier and gone a different way.

I certainly concede traffic reports are far less useful when I'm driving somewhere other than the DC area.

From my perspective, if it's a short trip (to the grocery store), I usually just listen to WRR 101.1 (https://markholtz.info/wrr101) which is the non-commercial classical music station in the Dallas-Fort Worth Radio Market (https://markholtz.info/dfwradio). I generally shun the commercial stations because of the ratio of commercials, jibber-jabber, and actual content. I think this is why some folks subscribe to Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandoria, or Apple Music... to actually listen to music.

While my vehicle has both a USB port and a CD player, I only used the CD player a handful of times. My big concern was that the vehicle has Bluetooth connectivity. I prefer to self-host my services, and while Plex (https://markholtz.info/plex) media server has been running for several years, AudioBookShelf (https://markholtz.info/audiobookshelf) was set up for audiobooks early last year. Because of data limits, I initially downloaded the media to my phone, but since my current mobile plan has unlimited data, I can focus on streaming.

One app that I do use on occassion is Radio Garden (https://markholtz.info/radiogarden) which is an excellent app for finding stations that are streaming from around the world including the NOAA weather stations. This includes stations from where I used to live as well as KUNV. In my opinion, the streaming feed from WRR is better than the OTA feed.

Thus, I selected streaming as my primary reason for consuming media.

My long drives are mostly a mixture of streaming music on Spotify and silence. Maybe if I'm bored I'll turn on the radio and find some kind of sermon or Christian music to listen to.

Quote from: CoreySamson on March 07, 2025, 10:48:38 AMMy long drives are mostly a mixture of streaming music on Spotify and silence. Maybe if I'm bored I'll turn on the radio and find some kind of sermon or Christian music to listen to.

To each their own, but that wouldn't decrease my level of boredom. :)

Nearly all of my long drives (1 hour+) include my wife and son, and we have something of a pattern:

-If one of our teams are playing, the play-by-play (via local broadcast, SiriusXM, or the MLB app). Otherwise:
-All (or most) of an album that we all enjoy (right now the two in heaviest rotation are the soundtracks to Come From Away and Hamilton)
-Each person listens to their own podcast or playlist
-Rotate between a handful of SiriusXM channels ('40s Junction, Beatles, Classic Vinyl, First Wave, Lithium, Alt Nation)

When I was driving back and forth between home and college (about 4 hours) I had mixtapes that I played regularly enough that when I drive that route now, certain cities will put certain songs right in my head.

Just the radio. Unlike in the US, over here most stations are part of a network, and the radio does the work of picking up the next frequency by matching a code shared by all stations of the network called programme identification (PI).

Podcasts (pre-downloaded) and my MP3 collection.

Quote from: ZLoth on March 07, 2025, 10:13:25 AMOne app that I do use on occassion is Radio Garden (https://markholtz.info/radiogarden) which is an excellent app for finding stations that are streaming from around the world including the NOAA weather stations. This includes stations from where I used to live as well as KUNV. In my opinion, the streaming feed from WRR is better than the OTA feed.

I normally listen to KUNV over the air, but I also stream it occasionally from their app. It shows a list of songs that they've recently played, which is nice because much of what they play has no lyrics, so there's nothing to type into Google to find the title and artist. You can also add songs to a list of "favorites". The DJs mention occasionally that the number of favorites actually influences how often they play a given song. Anecdotally, I have noticed that when I favorite a song it does seem to get played more frequently, so I'm guessing there must not be many people using that feature.

Going with SiriusXM, although in the past, I've also taken a bunch of tapes and CDs (depending on what player the car had) for a road trip.

Quote from: Scott5114 on March 07, 2025, 07:03:11 PMI normally listen to KUNV over the air, but I also stream it occasionally from their app. It shows a list of songs that they've recently played, which is nice because much of what they play has no lyrics, so there's nothing to type into Google to find the title and artist. You can also add songs to a list of "favorites".

Interactive radio... nice! It's also nice when you can view the playlist on the website.

I still listen to terrestrial, traditional radio on my drives. I must say though that the homogenization of radio stations has meant too many stations that sound the same, and too many with similar formats.

My audio distraction in the car consists of:

• Streamed music
• Auto-downloaded podcasts
• Manually-downloaded audiobooks

Short (<90 minute) drives are usually streamed music or podcasts, depending on mood or whether my wife (who hates my tastes in podcasts) is with me.

Longer drives are usually audiobooks or podcasts.  Having them downloaded is good, because at least of uncertain cellular coverage, and to maintain consistency with my drives home from Montréal (poor cellular reception on I-87 along the Adirondacks).

Also, I haven't found a streaming service that serves up podcasts the way that I prefer to listen to them (I subscribe to several, and generally just want the most recent unplayed episode to be playing), and having just one or two downloaded books on the phone is easier than hunting for the correct book out of several available for streaming (especially if commanding the phone by voice).

I haven't listened to local broadcast radio in years.  My phone does an adequate job delivering traffic or weather information sufficient for my needs, and I wouldn't want to have to argue with my car's infotainment system to find "the right" station anyway.   I do, however, occasionally DX MW and SW broadcast stations from home.

Quote from: Ted$8roadFan on March 08, 2025, 07:19:42 AMI still listen to terrestrial, traditional radio on my drives. I must say though that the homogenization of radio stations has meant too many stations that sound the same, or with similar formats.

Unfortunately, too true.

Quote from: Ted$8roadFan on March 08, 2025, 07:19:42 AMI still listen to terrestrial, traditional radio on my drives. I must say though that the homogenization of radio stations has meant too many stations that sound the same, and too many with similar formats.

This seems to be an old problem, at least in rural areas. When I drove around the Midwest, in 1996, it was really hard to escape Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura.

I use regular radio, even though it's lousy compared to 40 years ago.

A family member does have Sirius XM, but there's no way I'd pay for something that doesn't even have local content, when regular radio is free. But regular radio doesn't have much local content anymore either. Even if all you need is a brief report on a traffic jam, you can turn to the biggest station in town and they would instead be playing a rebroadcast from a week ago of some has-been talk show host.

Quote from: bandit957 on March 08, 2025, 10:27:10 AMwhen regular radio is free.

Regular radio isn't "free". If you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product in terms of demographics, thus advertising surrounded by content.

Used regular radio for the first time in years on a short drive.  It was some classic rock station that promised something like 40 minutes of non-stop music...that then proceeded to play a commercial between every song.  Back in my day, non-stop music meant non-stop music, with maybe just an announcement of the station identification between songs.

Quote from: ZLoth on March 08, 2025, 11:24:20 AM

Quote from: bandit957 on March 08, 2025, 10:27:10 AMwhen regular radio is free.

Regular radio isn't "free". If you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product in terms of demographics, thus advertising surrounded by content.

There seems to be much less of an ability to accurately track the demographics of FM radio listeners than newer forms of media consumption...

Quote from: Rothman on March 08, 2025, 11:25:48 AMUsed regular radio for the first time in years on a short drive.  It was some classic rock station that promised something like 40 minutes of non-stop music...that then proceeded to play a commercial between every song.  Back in my day, non-stop music meant non-stop music, with maybe just an announcement of the station identification between songs.

There used to be fewer commercials back then too.

I remember WLAP-FM making a big issue of its "no-talk 3 in a row." They would play 3 songs in a row that didn't even have a station ID between them. I could pick up this station pretty well in Highland Heights.

Quote from: Rothman on March 08, 2025, 11:25:48 AMBack in my day, non-stop music meant non-stop music, with maybe just an announcement of the station identification between songs.

I think it still generally does. Either your station was outright lying, or you tuned in right at the end of the 40 minutes.

A station I know of that does 2 hours of commercial-free music during morning rush hour is accurate to what it says. I don't remember if there's talking or not, but there are definitely no commercials during that time.

Quote from: hotdogPi on March 08, 2025, 11:42:30 AM

Quote from: Rothman on March 08, 2025, 11:25:48 AMBack in my day, non-stop music meant non-stop music, with maybe just an announcement of the station identification between songs.

I think it still generally does. Either your station was outright lying, or you tuned in right at the end of the 40 minutes.

A station I know of that does 2 hours of commercial-free music during morning rush hour is accurate to what it says. I don't remember if there's talking or not, but there are definitely no commercials during that time.

I'm going with "outright lying" since I was in the middle of the block.

Quote from: bandit957A family member does have Sirius XM, but there's no way I'd pay for something that doesn't even have local content, when regular radio is free.

What kind of "local content" are you getting with over the air broadcast radio? Is the information anything that can't be found within a few seconds of searching on a smart phone?

A long time ago I thought services like Sirius|XM were stupid. But it is kind of nice to not have to listen to lots of irritating commercials and banal jibber-jabber from some "DJ" talking over a bunch of a song you want to hear.

Regarding using "local radio" for traffic updates: that really depends the radio location and if the "DJ" personality is actually working live. These days most of these people are pre-programming their shows. What goes out over the airwaves is pre-recorded canned stuff. For live traffic updates anyone is going to be better off using the traffic layer in Google Maps.

Weird for me buying a new car yesterday that didn't have SiriusXM in it, where my last two did.

My wife still has it in her car, so I just cancelled mine, downloaded the app, and will use my wife's account streaming thru Carplay in my new car.

Some companies like Honda aren't even installing satellite radio anymore. What I bought they do it was just an option on the more expensive variants that I was not interested in.

Quote from: SectorZ on March 09, 2025, 09:45:24 AMWeird for me buying a new car yesterday that didn't have SiriusXM in it, where my last two did.

Let me guess... CD wasn't even offered as an option on any variant.

Quote from: ZLoth on March 09, 2025, 11:18:44 AM

Quote from: SectorZ on March 09, 2025, 09:45:24 AMWeird for me buying a new car yesterday that didn't have SiriusXM in it, where my last two did.

Let me guess... CD wasn't even offered as an option on any variant.

I imagine CD players are fully extinct in any car, but yes was a not a feature in any of the seven trim lines of the car I bought.

Quote from: SectorZ on March 09, 2025, 04:37:38 PM

Quote from: ZLoth on March 09, 2025, 11:18:44 AM

Quote from: SectorZ on March 09, 2025, 09:45:24 AMWeird for me buying a new car yesterday that didn't have SiriusXM in it, where my last two did.

Let me guess... CD wasn't even offered as an option on any variant.

I imagine CD players are fully extinct in any car, but yes was a not a feature in any of the seven trim lines of the car I bought.

Not surprised. It's much easier (and less weight) to include Bluetooth functionality than a CD player, plus there is more that can go wrong in a car CD player.

I typically listen to my Spotify library on shuffle, I have it automatically downloaded to my device storage so usually I don't worry much about spotty cell coverage.

When I get bored I tune around for local FM stations - WNRN recently added an affiliate in Hampton so I've been listening to them a bunch around town. WNOR and WHRV have fairly high-quality audio feeds so I listen to them a bit as well.

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Quote from: SectorZ on March 09, 2025, 09:45:24 AMWeird for me buying a new car yesterday that didn't have SiriusXM in it, where my last two did.

My wife still has it in her car, so I just cancelled mine, downloaded the app, and will use my wife's account streaming thru Carplay in my new car.

Some companies like Honda aren't even installing satellite radio anymore. What I bought they do it was just an option on the more expensive variants that I was not interested in.

That's surprising, I was under the assumption that Sirius was paying automakers to put satellite radio receivers in vehicles so they could have easy access to customers.

My 2015-era car is in the brief time overlap where it still came with a physical CD player, but also included "modern" things like Apple CarPlay, SiriusXM, Bluetooth streaming.

For commuting, pretty much exclusively SiriusXM.  Mostly "70s on 7", but there are about a dozen other stations in my presets in case a particularly wretched song comes on.

For road trips, either SiriusXM or playing music from my phone though CarPlay.  The majority of music on my phone was copied from physical CDs that I have purchased (yes I still obtain music through physical media).

In previous cars it was mostly FM radio, although on road trips finding new stations (when the one I was listening to got out of range) got old after a while.  Road trips also included physical CDs, but it was clumsy changing them when I was driving solo.

Living in the Charleston, SC metro area this is a very interesting question as it definitely depends on how and where I drive. On a short routine drive I usually listen to a set of podcasts I listen to frequently, different subjects (Catholic, college football, college basketball, other stuff).

With Android Auto and Kia Connect in my car I have GPS where ever I go. But Android Auto I can check traffic information much quicker than on the radio.

The local radio stations basically only cover I-26, I-526 and US 17 because those are the only places that have cameras and they can see what's going on. Outside that they basically just use SC511.

I do listen to local radio; we have a good local Christian station on 91.5, sometimes I listen to His Radio which is more contemporary Christian, and we have a 80s/90s/70s/60s soul station on 102.1.

But most of the other local stations are homogenized with the same couple hundred songs and often non-local personalities.

Satellite radio hasn't gotten much better especially on the major channels. The 60s and 70s stations seem to only play a few hundred songs in their rotation, basically sticking to the most popular hits. When I started listening to satellite around 2005, they had a much wider playlist. They'd go through everything on their playlist A-Z yearly around the holidays for a long time.

Quote from: Thing 342 on March 09, 2025, 07:19:45 PM...

That's surprising, I was under the assumption that Sirius was paying automakers to put satellite radio receivers in vehicles so they could have easy access to customers.

I saw somewhere that it just became available last year for the first time in Teslas.

I used to have the SiriusXM service for several years, although I always threatened cancellation at renewal time in order to get the best deal. It was finally cancelled about three years ago when I upgraded the phones and, to get the best deal, I had to upgrade to the more expensive unlimited data plan. Since I wasn't driving much anymore, I cancelled SiriusXM to somewhat offset the increased mobile cost, and stream music/audiobooks/radio stations through my mobile phone to my vehicle's Bluetooth.

As for the presets on my radio, I have it set as follows:

• Preset 1 - WBAP 820 AM (EAS LP-1)
• Preset 2 - KSCS 96.3 FM (EAS LP-2)
• Preset 3 - WRR 101.1 FM

That's it.

On my RadioGarden list, I have the following:

• AncientFM - Kingston, Canada
• WBAP 820 AM - Dallas, TX
• WRR 101.1 - Dallas, TX
• WOTR Old Time Radio USA
• WOTR Crime Time USA
• WOTR Suspense Radio USA
• KEC56 NOAA Weather Radio - Dallas, TX
• ABN Old-Time Radio AM 1610 - Antioch, IL
• British Home Front Radio - Dorechester, UK
• Smooth Jazz 24/7 - New York, NY
• Classic FM - London, UK

And, as stated multiple times, I have a Plex media server and a Audiobookshelf audiobook server.

Quote from: ZLoth on March 08, 2025, 11:24:20 AM

Quote from: bandit957 on March 08, 2025, 10:27:10 AMwhen regular radio is free.

Regular radio isn't "free". If you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product in terms of demographics, thus advertising surrounded by content.

Which doesn't cost you anything.  Especially considering you're just sitting there driving anyway, it doesn't even cost you any time.

While I still rely on regular radio, I literally get sick to my stomach hearing how much it's declined.

Put radio in 2025 up against radio in 1983, and it's no comparison.

Quote from: SectorZI imagine CD players are fully extinct in any car, but yes was a not a feature in any of the seven trim lines of the car I bought.

I have a 2018 Chevy Silverado. It has a built-in CD player along with all the Bluetooth, Apple/Android stuff. Chevy got rid of the CD players starting with the 2019 Silverado models. It's likely CD players were phased out of many other makes/models of vehicles in the same period.

Quote from: ZLothNot surprised. It's much easier (and less weight) to include Bluetooth functionality than a CD player, plus there is more that can go wrong in a car CD player.

The audio quality is still better in a Red Book CD. However, hauling around CDs in jewel cases is not convenient. It can be a pain swapping out discs while driving. The jewel cases can get scratched up by jostling around in a glove box or center console. The worst thing is those album books that would hold lots of naked discs in plastic sleeves. It wouldn't take long for the sleeves to scratch the discs and make them worthless.

For me, the must-have thing in a new or recent model vehicle is at least 2 or more USB ports. If the vehicle can play audio files from external media (flash-based memory sticks or portable solid state hard drives) then it solves the CD problem. Copy the CD audio to the removable storage media and play that. A solid state drive takes up little space in a glove box or center console.

Quote from: kphogerWhich doesn't cost you anything.  Especially considering you're just sitting there driving anyway, it doesn't even cost you any time.

Broadcast radio costs the listener in other ways. The frequent commercials on stations that play rock, pop or country tax my patience. In my middle age I've reached the point where I don't like putting up with commercials. So many of them are very annoying. If I'm watching a local TV station at home I often hit the mute button when a commercial break starts. Some broadcast radio DJs have a habit of talking over a good chunk of the beginning or end of a tune.

Music on broadcast radio is frequently edited. Obviously any profanity will be deleted. Suggestive/explicit lyrics also get edited. I'll immediately judge a radio station to be lame if it edits out a guitar solo or other parts of the song to shorten its length (to make room for more commercials). Some radio stations will even speed up the music tempo using various digital audio trickery. Services like Sirius|XM, Amazon Music, Spotify, etc tend to play music uncensored.

Quote from: Bobby5280 on March 10, 2025, 12:15:30 PMBroadcast radio costs the listener in other ways. The frequent commercials on stations that play rock, pop or country tax my patience. In my middle age I've reached the point where I don't like putting up with commercials. So many of them are very annoying. If I'm watching a local TV station at home I often hit the mute button when a commercial break starts. Some broadcast radio DJs have a habit of talking over a good chunk of the beginning or end of a tune.

Music on broadcast radio is frequently edited. Obviously any profanity will be deleted. Suggestive/explicit lyrics also get edited. I'll immediately judge a radio station to be lame if it edits out a guitar solo or other parts of the song to shorten its length (to make room for more commercials). Some radio stations will even speed up the music tempo using various digital audio trickery. Services like Sirius|XM, Amazon Music, Spotify, etc tend to play music uncensored.

Still free.

I mean, if my corner grocery store were to offer free gallons of store-brand purified water during a long drought, limit one jug per customer per day—then I wouldn't claim it wasn't free just because I disliked walking into that particular grocery store, because I didn't like the music or store ads they played over the speakers inside, because I preferred distilled water over purified water, because the security guard at the exit had bad breath, or anything else like that.

You dislike ads.  OK.  Big whoop.  Other people don't care about them.  My middle son loves listening to them.  Ads don't make something 'not free'.

Quote from: Bobby5280 on March 10, 2025, 12:15:30 PM

Quote from: ZLothNot surprised. It's much easier (and less weight) to include Bluetooth functionality than a CD player, plus there is more that can go wrong in a car CD player.

The audio quality is still better in a Red Book CD. However, hauling around CDs in jewel cases is not convenient. It can be a pain swapping out discs while driving. The jewel cases can get scratched up by jostling around in a glove box or center console. The worst thing is those album books that would hold lots of naked discs in plastic sleeves. It wouldn't take long for the sleeves to scratch the discs and make them worthless.

Many of the CDs in my collection are either imports and/or out-of-print, so I used to duplicate the CD into a CD-R and used those. When my Honda was broken into in 2005, they grabbed my collection of CD-Rs. I hope the thieves liked Anime soundtracks and classical music.

I'm still a physical media lover, but I do rip my media into a very highbit MP3, so it is almost indistinguishable from a CD. (I think it's around 160k for the bitrate, with the compromise being a larger file size). Also, the later revisions of the Bluetooth standard has better transfer rates over the earlier standards.

Quote from: bandit957 on March 10, 2025, 11:18:08 AMWhile I still rely on regular radio, I literally get sick to my stomach hearing how much it's declined.

Put radio in 2025 up against radio in 1983, and it's no comparison.

Can you elaborate based upon your perspective?

Quote from: ZLoth on March 10, 2025, 03:03:36 PM

Quote from: bandit957 on March 10, 2025, 11:18:08 AMWhile I still rely on regular radio, I literally get sick to my stomach hearing how much it's declined.

Put radio in 2025 up against radio in 1983, and it's no comparison.

Can you elaborate based upon your perspective?

Programming is much more homogenized now, and less interesting. There's also more commercials now.

We had a really good AM music station here in the mid-'80s that had local DJ's and didn't rely on some huge monopoly to dictate its programming. This was a lot more exciting than today's stations that run off a hard drive or satellite.

My wife and I have a shared "road trip playlist" on Spotify we both add to, it's above 3,000 songs now. On road trips, we use that playlist on Shuffle. Keeps it simple and fair (eg. don't have to worry about switching between radio stations I prefer vs. stations my wife prefers). The whole playlist is downloaded to my phone so cell signal isn't a concern.

When driving around town, we usually listen to SiriusXM instead. Less hassle since it's ready to go as soon as I start the car. It's also a good way to hear new music, sometimes I'll get to my destination then add a new song I heard to the playlist on my phone. Of course we can use that on road trips too, but we prefer the bigger variety on our playlist, rather than sticking to one channel, or flipping between channels and cutting off songs. Also, there are some heavily wooded areas, or deep canyons/gorges (eg. I-84 Columbia Gorge) we sometime drive through where the SXM signal is not very reliable.

I haven't listened to FM in nearly a decade. 1. I hate the ads. 2. My car's OEM stereo sounded really bad/muffled on FM for some reason. Bluetooth and SXM was not affected so I stuck to those. I have since installed a new stereo, with Android Auto support, and the FM sounds normal now. But I still don't use it. Besides that, FM is not good for road trips, since a lot of the time out west, you're not in range of many stations. And even if you are, you need to constantly change to different stations in different cities.

Quote from: bandit957Programming is much more homogenized now, and less interesting. There's also more commercials now.

Our local broadcast radio stations are pretty much "local" in name only anymore. Back in the 1990's when the stations were locally owned they were much better. As the stations were sold again and again to bigger ownership groups their in-house music libraries were largely deleted or thrown in the garbage. Music playlists became dictated on high by corporate home offices. Local staff was cut to a minimal level. Most of the on-air talent listeners can hear do not live in Lawton. Most of the local disc jockeys got fired.

The only local radio station we have that does any real live broadcasts is the one at Cameron University. But they don't play popular rock, country or R&B music. It's mostly jazz, classical music and some NPR programs. Considering the current environment it wouldn't surprise me if the station got shut down.

Quote from: doorknob60Besides that, FM is not good for road trips, since a lot of the time out west, you're not in range of many stations. And even if you are, you need to constantly change to different stations in different cities.

When I drive to Colorado there is a big zone between Amarillo and Raton with little if any broadcast radio service. I can hit the seek button and the function will just loop across the dial repeatedly until I stop it. If you manually turn the dial digit by digit some stations will come in faintly.

Quote from: 1995hoo on March 10, 2025, 07:44:19 AM

Quote from: Thing 342 on March 09, 2025, 07:19:45 PM...

That's surprising, I was under the assumption that Sirius was paying automakers to put satellite radio receivers in vehicles so they could have easy access to customers.

I saw somewhere that it just became available last year for the first time in Teslas.

Actually just recently in the mainstream Model 3 and Model Y, and it's by streaming.  The pricier Model X and Model S has had SiriusXM hardware for some time.  (Don't know about the Cybertruck).

There was a point a while back where Model Y owners were buying SiriusXM modules scrapped from the high end Teslas on eBay and mounting them in their Model Y.  Apparently the software would then recognize them just fine.

Quote from: bandit957 on March 10, 2025, 03:12:00 PMProgramming is much more homogenized now, and less interesting. There's also more commercials now.

We had a really good AM music station here in the mid-'80s that had local DJ's and didn't rely on some huge monopoly to dictate its programming. This was a lot more exciting than today's stations that run off a hard drive or satellite.

Eyup, I agree, partially because of all the radio station acquisitions by the major media groups. Thank goodness for the alternatives available now.

For long road trips, a bunch of podcasts/downloaded music. For storm chasing, I tend to keep to local radio as I use my phone a lot for pictures/radar

SiriusXM or mp3/mp4a music files on a flash drive played directly by the car's radio.  It's all music as I'm not too fond of listening to talk radio, podcasts, sports, etc. while I drive.  Music is often better for maintaining pace.

Poll closed, and "Streaming Media through mobile device" was slightly edged out by "Downloaded Media through mobile device"