Smart phone or MP3 Player?

[elicross]

If you listen to digital music (MP3s, FLACs, whatever) on a portable device, what kind of device do you use? Your smart phone? A dedicated media player like an iPod? Or something else entirely? (If Other, tell us what you use!)

[StratBluesRock]

I use a 30GB iPod 5th Generation. I need to get a new 30 pin port for my 6th Generation 80 gig one.

[Freejack]

Generally I don't listen to any device when I'm portable (moving around somewhere not at my desk or couch). When I'm working around the house, I might have my iPhone on playing something from my back pocket though.

Carl

[bradpdx]

iPhone 4S with iTunes Match engaged. I've got the lion's share of my music library in iTunes Match, meaning that about 20,000 tracks are stored in Apple's cloud servers. Even though my iPhone has only 32GB of local storage, I can access anything in my 100+GB library. It keeps everything completely synced between the iPhone, iPads, and different computers running iTunes. Any changes made from any device (new music added, songs removed, playlists created, etc.) are immediately available to all.

I've had many regular iPods, but love the connectivity of the iPhone as it relates to listening. I listen a good deal to Spotify, Pandora and NPR Music on the phone as a result.

When mobile, I use Bose MIE2i earbuds because they are crushingly pleasant to listen to. At home, I use AirPlay to send audio to one of 2 stereo systems, directly from the iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Yes, we are an Apple household.

[getbent]

Originally Posted by bradpdx

iPhone 4S with iTunes Match engaged. I've got the lion's share of my music library in iTunes Match, meaning that about 20,000 tracks are stored in Apple's cloud servers. Even though my iPhone has only 32GB of local storage, I can access anything in my 100+GB library. It keeps everything completely synced between the iPhone, iPads, and different computers running iTunes. Any changes made from any device (new music added, songs removed, playlists created, etc.) are immediately available to all.

I've had many regular iPods, but love the connectivity of the iPhone as it relates to listening. I listen a good deal to Spotify, Pandora and NPR Music on the phone as a result.

When mobile, I use Bose MIE2i earbuds because they are crushingly pleasant to listen to. At home, I use AirPlay to send audio to one of 2 stereo systems, directly from the iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Yes, we are an Apple household.

pretty much the same solution here. eery!

[leetorrence]

If you're not an Apple household you can do a similar thing with any cheap android phone (plus whatever size sd card you want to put in) and Google Music. My $50 phone came with a 32 meg storage card. You can easily choose what music you want resident on the SD card vs what you want in the cloud. Google Music gives you 25 gigs of storage for free.

[rcole_sooner]

I use my Android to listen to music over headphones, but I found using a flash stick in my car audio deck was easier to deal with. And I want the car audio deck to do the decoding (better decoding and a lot fewer signal amplifications going on).

[elicross]

Lee, thanks for the post about Google Music. It inspired me to finally get off my butt and set up my PC and Android to use it.

I'll probably keep my "Current Playlist" on my SD card; I don't want my music to suddenly stop playing when I'm driving out to my parents' house near the lake (AT&T's coverage out there is terrible), but I do love the idea of having access to all of my music wherever I've got my phone and a 3G/4G connection. (Now, if I could find a way to stream music from the Google cloud to my Xbox 360, I'd be even happier.)

I wonder if Google increased the amount of free storage. I've got a collection of just over 10,000 songs, weighing in at a little more than 50GB. But the Google Music Manager said I had space for 20,000 songs. (Or does Google Music change the format and bitrate of music you upload to maximize storage?)

[puremania]

It's an "in the car" question for me, where, depending on what I want, I use either Google Music via my Android phone, my iPod, or a thumb drive. All are perfectly viable options for me.

[Thighbanez]

When I get my Galaxy S2 in a few months it will cover everything I ever needed.
Car integration with Pandora, headphone listening and phone usage.

none of which I get with my Black...er...WACKberry Tour.

[leetorrence]

Hey Eli - you're right. Here's what google says about storage limits:

At this time, you can add up to 20,000 songs (maximum 250MB per individual song) from your music collection. To see how many songs you've added, visit play.google.com/music and click 'Settings'.

[Califiddler]

I use both an iPod and an iPhone.

The poll would not let me check both, so I didn't vote.

[losergeek]

I like having a good variety of stuff on my iPhone since its always on me, but I still have my entire collection on an 80gig iPod that I use a lot at work and so on. I've tried using streaming apps to eliminate the need for the iPod but they kill my iPhone battery so for the time being its not a feasible option for the amount I listen to music.

[AndyLowry]

I said "other" because it's usually the Nexus 7, or streaming my Google Music library from a computer.

[elicross]

Originally Posted by leetorrence

Hey Eli - you're right. Here's what google says about storage limits:

At this time, you can add up to 20,000 songs (maximum 250MB per individual song) from your music collection. To see how many songs you've added, visit play.google.com/music and click 'Settings'.

Nice! I was afraid they were transcoding it to 96Kbps to get 20,000 songs in 25GB of space.