Warning! If You Buy a New Car, Read This

[no4mk1t]

I just Bluetooth the phone to the car and play tunes from an extensive library of music on my phone.
No subscription.
No calls.
No spam.
No worries.

And yes, Skinerd and CCR are in the playlist.

 

[Racer88]

I just Bluetooth the phone to the car and play tunes from an extensive library of music on my phone.
No subscription.
No calls.
No spam.
No worries.

And yes, Skinerd and CCR are in the playlist.

I do have a subscription, of course. I get zero calls or spam.

I like the variety of rock genres and songs that I could never match (never minding the cost of buying that much music). Plus I've learned about a TON of music I never heard on the regular radio. Just one of many examples is the (dedicated) Tom Petty XM station. I knew his big hits, of course. But holy moly... that dude was a PROLIFIC song-writer! He wrote and recorded a shit-ton of GREAT stuff that never made mainstream radio.

 

[NavyVette]

So, LT Racer88, I replaced Sirius/XM with Pandora with the Military discount, and you can choose '80s hits, or other stuff you listen to on your subscription.

I listen to '70's and '80s stuff, 2000 and newer country, etcetera.
You can even tell it to never play crap like Adelle - unless of course you miss the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

I have a "station" called 'My Station' where I have Country, Rock & Roll, Blues, etcetera. It does not just play my thumbs upped songs but stuff I have not heard before as well. I can thumbs up it, and it goes into the playlist "My Thumbs Up" or thumbs down it, and you will never hear it again.

You can listen to albums too, if you want.

Or if you want, you can listen to "My Thumbs Up" or just your thumbs up in each channel you listen to.

You can search for and listen to songs too.

You can also download them to your phone for offline listening.

In the flatland that's probably not important, but here in the high country it is.

 

[Racer88]

So, LT Racer88, I replaced Sirius/XM with Pandora with the Military discount, and you can choose '80s hits, or other stuff you listen to on your subscription.

I listen to '70's and '80s stuff, 2000 and newer country, etcetera.
You can even tell it to never play crap like Adelle - unless of course you miss the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

I have a "station" called 'My Station' where I have Country, Rock & Roll, Blues, etcetera. It does not just play my thumbs upped songs but stuff I have not heard before as well. I can thumbs up it, and it goes into the playlist "My Thumbs Up" or thumbs down it, and you will never hear it again.

You can listen to albums too, if you want.

Or if you want, you can listen to "My Thumbs Up" or just your thumbs up in each channel you listen to.

You can search for and listen to songs too.

You can also download them to your phone for offline listening.

In the flatland that's probably not important, but here in the high country it is.

I just want to listen to random songs on my preferred XM channels. If a song comes on that I don't like, without taking my eyes off the road or hands off the wheel... I can just flip to the next channel in my 12 saved channel presets (with the button on the steering wheel)... I don't even have to look. Within those preset channels, there is always something playing that I like. The signal is ALWAYS there ANYwhere in North America.

I'm not going to be a distracted driver searching up or "thumbing up" songs or creating playlists on an internet service. That's WAY too much work. Plus you have to run that through your phone, dependent on a cell signal and bandwidth / data issues. No thanks. Pandora is definitely not for me. I don't use my phone while driving. Ever.

 

[no4mk1t]

I do have a subscription, of course. I get zero calls or spam.

I like the variety of rock genres and songs that I could never match (never minding the cost of buying that much music). Plus I've learned about a TON of music I never heard on the regular radio. Just one of many examples is the (dedicated) Tom Petty XM station. I knew his big hits, of course. But holy moly... that dude was a PROLIFIC song-writer! He wrote and recorded a shit-ton of GREAT stuff that never made mainstream radio.

I suppose you never heard of Limewire, eh?

 

[Racer88]

I suppose you never heard of Limewire, eh?

No idea what or who that is.

 

[no4mk1t]

No idea what or who that is.

Limewire was a P2P file sharing platform back in the early 2000's. It was the successor to Napster after the music industry brought its guns to bear on it. It worked great if you had a high speed internet connection for downloading movies.

Alas, back then, dial-up was the only thing available here, so I would load the queue up with a bunch of song titles before bed and in the morning, I would have most of them.
I was interested in older recordings that were not the focus of the industry trying to combat declining sales on current releases, using the copyright as the tool to control file sharing. Once Napster became a subscribed platform and the industry got their cut, everyone was cool with it.

It was great while it lasted. I was able to get a lot of old songs long out of print and unavailable on CD.

Today, the streaming services make P2P obsolete. It's cheap and easy to use it instead.

 

[Racer88]

Limewire was a P2P file sharing platform back in the early 2000's. It was the successor to Napster after the music industry brought its guns to bear on it. It worked great if you had a high speed internet connection for downloading movies.

Alas, back then, dial-up was the only thing available here, so I would load the queue up with a bunch of song titles before bed and in the morning, I would have most of them.
I was interested in older recordings that were not the focus of the industry trying to combat declining sales on current releases, using the copyright as the tool to control file sharing. Once Napster became a subscribed platform and the industry got their cut, everyone was cool with it.

It was great while it lasted. I was able to get a lot of old songs long out of print and unavailable on CD.

Today, the streaming services make P2P obsolete. It's cheap and easy to use it instead.

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Yeah... I have no use for streaming services. Again... I'm not fiddling with my phone while driving. I've got to pay attention to the road, which is filled with other people fucking with their phones (and not paying attention to the road).

 

[Bobster]

I subscribed to BearShare before it got axed. All their shit was WMA and rights-protected so it would only play for 30days. Conveniently, I had SoundTaxi which would play the WMA double?-speed and re-record it as .mp3. Like Nofor, I would set a bunch to "play" overnight and wake up to folders full of .mp3s...

In my quest to reclaim all my childhood music I once had on vinyl LP into .mp3, I had already "ripped" all of my audio CDs. I actually bought the complete Beatles albums on CD and ripped them as well as early Aerosmith. Only the originals--no "best of" or live. Sold off the collections and got my money back.

I still have a few vinyl LPs I need to play and record when I get around to it...

 

[NavyVette]

The signal is ALWAYS there ANYwhere in North America.

Not in the Rockies it's not. We lost signal all over the place.

I use Pandora on my TV too, and thumbs up there.

And I can switch stations on the radio with a quick pull on the button on the back of the wheel too, or songs in Pandora.

That all said, I would go back to Sirius/XM if it were less money, or I could pay for one subscription and use it on all my vehicles.

I have thought about using the app on my phone, but then I am burning data again, and battery on the phone, not to mention would lose steering wheel control, which I am not giving up.