>Multi-part question.
>
>1) What is your primary source of music? Do you use a
>streaming app, multiple streaming apps? Still rocking a
>personal library? Still doing CDs? Cassettes?


"Personal" library. I've pirated music since my late-teens, mostly due to how much of it I want to hear (or wanted to hear) and how much control I want over it. I can't justify a subscription to one of the broader streaming services so long as they look less appealing and have less information and variety on the music than my own iTunes playlist does. Plus, my iTunes library is over 232,000 tracks large, and it's been building since my senior year of high school. That's ten years of music history in there; it'd feel strange to say goodbye to it, even if it's all digital data and I own very little of it.

I've never owned a record player, but I do still buy CDs of albums I really, really like or have neat packaging. They go in a box and are rarely if ever opened since I also don't own a car.

>2) Do you usually listen to playlists? Are they based on an
>artist/ several artists or more of a mood? Are they playlists
>you made, where you individually picked out all the songs on
>the playlist? Do you prefer to listen to music in blocks of
>similar songs, gangsta rap hour, new jack swing, late 90's boy
>bands, etc or shuffle and mix it up as much as possible?


For the longest time I was pretty much strictly albums, but over the past three years I've really struggled to - at first - want to listen to music at all, and these days just to carve out time for music in the rest of my media diet. Every day my podcast feed gets something like four hours of new content, I really enjoy playing video games and feel guilty listening to music or podcasts while I play anything story based, I'd like to watch some movies and television every once in a while...these days, I usually carve out Sunday or Monday, days I know I have off, to writing about four/five albums or listening intently to three or four albums throughout the day.

But for most of the past year until I put that restriction on myself for the new year, it was mostly listening to playlists I made for my now ex-GF. I'm pretty damn good at making tapes with a sense of flow and story to them, and I found them really pleasurable to listen to while I was with her, and then a good reminder of my ability to be in a good, loving relationship or at least live within the appearance of one once we weren't together any more.


>3) Do you listen to whole albums often? Mostly new or older?


Like I said above, it's still my preferred method of listening. Much less diverse than when I was younger, due to the time constraints. I'm working on covering full artist discographies I've overlooked or skipped around on or want to reappraise, also, as a way of keeping my critical mind active while also filling holes and not necessarily focusing entirely on current music. These are the last full albums I listened to intently and where they hit in my Handbook, plus the Black Panther soundtrack I'm listening to for the first time as I fill this post out:


#1242 Pitbull - Rebelution (Feb 5)
#255 Maxo Kream - Maxo 187 (Feb 5)
#1098 Travis Scott - Days Before Rodeo (Feb 5)
#1042 Travis Scott - Owl Pharaoh (Feb 5)
#304 Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory (Feb 5)
#1013 Ski Mask the Slump God - You Will Regret (Jan 17)
#229 Skyzoo - Music for My Friends (Jan 17)
#142 Vince Staples - Prima Donna (Jan 17)
#451 Vince Staples - Summertime '06 (Jan 13)
#167 Vince Staples - Hell Can Wait (Jan 8)
#503 Vince Staples - Shyne Coldchain II (Jan 7)


>4) How do you discover new music?


I check the Top 250 New Torrents list on my tracker two or three times a day, I follow what my friends are writing about on RateYourMusic, I read the music writing on The Ringer, check in with Pitchfork every once in a while, and shuffle my own library. That 232,000 number means there's a lot of stuff there I haven't heard or have forgotten about entirely. It also means I might accidentally listen to a 98 Degrees deep cut.

I also log in to LiveMixtapes once or twice a day to see what's new on both the mainstream and "indy" channels; I'll download stuff from artists I've never heard of with terrible box art if there's a single production credit or feature from someone I like, and then never listen to it. But this is also how I knew about Freddie Gibbs and Big K.R.I.T. before anyone else, so I still do it.


>5) What's your primary hardware set up for music? Phone and
>earbuds/headphones? Car? Home stereo set up? Bluetooth
>speakers? Internal phone speaker?

I have Klipsch Image x11 earbuds for out in public, though the wiring has gotten a bit frayed down by the jack. I need to get some electrical tape because they still sound glorious. I've never had to pay full price for these things, either; I've had three pair and paid as little as $80 for one pair and at most $150 for these recent ones; the MSRP is usually $350.

But I honestly don't listen to music on headphones much, I find it kind of claustrophobic and constricting. That wasn't really the case when I was a kid but more and more feels that way to me now. I almost always listen to music on my fairly basic but I think pretty good sounding Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 computer speakers. I'm sure there are all sorts of subtlties that don't come out of these things, but hey, if most music is being mastered for laptop speakers at this point is that really true? Also, I live in an apartment with terrifyingly thin walls and the fact that I'm able to get away with any kind of subwoofer-supported system is a minor miracle (and indicative of incredibly lenient neighbors who also, in turn, blast their shit at weird hours and I say nothing).

>any other relevant comments/questions welcome


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
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