One of the few consistent things about my days is my music. The only times I’m not regularly listening to something is usually when I’m away on my long trips (I don’t tend to take my iPod), but I have to admit that during my visit to Nepal and India, I picked up a taste for Bollywood film soundtracks.
Since I’ve got back, I’ve got into the habit of listening to internet radio on my Mac. I used to do this a bit in the past, but now I’ve hooked up my stereo to my sound system using a iPod headphone splitter it’s a much better experience. I’ve been a Radio 1 man for a long time, although mainly for Jo Whiley and Zane Lowe. I’m not a particular fan of Moyles and unfortunately find Edith Bowman’s voice tiresome, so I decided to try something else.
BBC 6music is one of those stations that probably isn’t taken that seriously. In fact, most people probably haven’t heard of it. Despite this, it plays some really good stuff, the presenters are up-and-coming or ex-mainstream types (Lemacq, Nemone, Shaun Keaveny) but because this isn’t mainstream they can play a bit more variety.
Admittedly not everything is to my taste, but on the whole I’ve been a lot more impressed than I have with Radio 1 of late.
You’ll notice that both of these are still BBC stations, and it is a concious decision. I dislike the adverts you have to navigate on the commercial stations, but somedays when I’m feeling lazy or not really listening properly, I’ll flip to Kerrang. Unfortunately, their online player leaves something to be desired… this little BBC Radio Dashboard widget is just too convenient.
I very rarely listen to radio anymore. We used to have a stereo blasting in the office until we starting bringing our hard-drives in with all our music. We now have a single PC set up with iTunes running on party shuffle all day and when it has some 20,000+ tracks to choose from, we get quite a bizzare selection. Right now we’ve gone from Polysics to Queen.
The same rule usually applies when I’m at home too. I plug my iPod into some speakers and leave it to play random tracks.
Variety is the spice of life afterall!... : )