De-Converging Technology - Music Follow Up
What is De-converging
For the full introduction, check out the previous post De-converging Technology - Introduction. This is part of an ongoing ramblings about my attempt to start deconverging my technology.
I thought it was time to do some follow-ups on my deconverging journey. In my post De-Converging Technology - Music I discussed how I switched to using an iPod for most of my music listening in place of always using streaming. I got to reap the benefits of my experiment recently when I traveled to go see my father and help him on the farm. It’s a day trip to get to his house and so some for of music is necessary. Normally I have to make sure that music playlists are downloaded in YouTube Music or Spotify before it, and hope that it just works.
Traveling
This trip I started out using some YouTube Music just to have some newer things playing, and about an hour into my drive YT Music crashed. Note that I’m using a Pixel 7, so it’s not like the phone is old or completely incapable. Closing the app and attempting to relaunch the app failed in getting me any music. Instead of having to fiddle with it and be a danger on the road, I plugged my iPod into the aux cable I have connected to the car, spun to “Shuffle Songs” and let it play. Just like that, music. No app to mess with, no need to worry about if the songs actually downloaded to storage, nothing. The only thing I have to worry about the iPod is if it has enough battery, especially after FlashModding it with 64GB of flash storage.
It was a nice reminder that while having new music at your fingertips is nice, it’s much nicer to have music you know you like ready and consistently available. It does of course still have tradeoffs, like in this case I was unable to control the music from my steering-wheel controls, and the audio quality isn’t going to be as good as a digital-to-digital connection versus the digital-to-analog-to-digital aux setup, but I’m willing to make that trade.
Day-to-day
I tend to drive very little in my day-to-day since I work from home, but I carry my iPod around the house and plop it on some old iPod docks I got off eBay for fairly cheap. I have one in the kitchen for when I’m cooking or doing dishes, and one in the office/den for jam sessions with the wife while we work. If I need focus, though, I’ll connect in my headphones instead.
When I do go out in the car I take the iPod with me 50% of the time, roughly. If it’s a quick trip to the store I won’t since YT music works consistently enough and if it doesn’t it’s not a long drive. But for anything longer I tend to take it with me.
Final thoughts
It’s interesting to see my YT Music use drastically fall since using the iPod and I generally don’t feel like I’m “missing out” on anything by not using a music streaming service. Granted, I still have the service, so when someone says “Check out this artist” I can. It might be different if I didn’t even have that ability. One major upside to the iPod has been re-discovering some of my favorite songs from the last 30 years that I’d forgotten about, or hearing a song from one of my mom’s CDs and remembering her. It has also been a lot more fun building my own personal playlists again, and wishlisting music on BandCamp or iTunes and spending a little to get an album each month. It reminds me of when I was a teenager saving up money for CDs.