How do you listen to your music, and how has it changed?

[tarraxahum]

Well when I was a kid my whole family was listening to CDs and sometimes tapes (and the radio, a lot of radio). My uncle gave me my own stereo system (CDs, tapes AND radio all in one) for my 10th birthday. Then, as I became a teen, there were local files on my phone and later on an mp3 player due to the lack of memory on said phone (I narrowly missed CD players by the time I got interested in portable music devices).

And honestly that stayed pretty much that way till, like. Hell, I don't even know. Till university? Or was it last years of high school? Definitely still had my music on my phone in 9th-10th grade.

At some point I started listening to streaming, Spotify and all that, but recently I've been moving back to local files. It's not a seamless move - sometimes it's easier to quickly look up a song on a streaming service than searching for the mp3, and I definitely got used to the automatic playlists vaguely based on genre for when I need something just playing in the background. Right now I use YouTube for that sorta ambience.

[starbreaker]

I've been ripping CDs and listening to local files for about 20 years now. What's changed is that it's gotten a lot easier to rip CDs because of multicore computers with more memory and storage. Unfortunately, modern computers usually don't come with built-in optical drives, so you've got to connect one via USB.

[vvinrg]

it's gotten a lot easier to rip CDs because of multicore computers with more memory and storage.

This!! My main windows desktop is a frankensteined mess of parts, of which there are 3 cd/dvd drives from various places. When I get home from the record store I can fire up Exact Audio Copy and rip 3 discs in parallel.