Here's a topic that I've been meaning to post for a long time:

How do we all integrate music into our daily lives?  

* Do we listen at work?  Have part of our collections on work harddrives?  Plug iPods into work speakers?  Have stacks of CDs next to our desks?  Do you we rock it at work or stick to the bossa nova jazz or Bach cantatas?  

* Do we bring CDs into the car anymore (mine always get trashed that way).  Do we have iTrips, plug portable harddrives into our radios, or listen to satellite radio?  Obviously, alone in the car is an ideal listening opportunity and I suspect one of our major outposts.

* At home, is there music playing all the time?  Do we still have single-CD players, or do we have those 500-disc changers.  Or have we abandoned the silver altogether and again, plugged in harddrives or iPods into the players.   Do we have small systems in dens and studies, or is it all in the living room?

* Do we listen by the seat of our pants or plan?  I've read about people making "getting dressed playlists" or others for dinners, parties, etc.  If so are they on an iPod, or other programs I'm not even aware of?  How about random shuffle?  While it's kind of fun because you sometimes forget what you have, I just can't get into it.  Knowing what comes next is somehow important to me.  (more on this topic later).

* Do we even have component stereos anymore ie amp, CD player, and speakers?  You can't seem to find them anymore, much less get them repaired, or do we have surround systems that serve both TV and audio?

* What about our spouses?  Do we curb our listening around them?   At my house, my wife often says "this [music] is not relaxing to me" as if I put it on to "relax" her.  For the first few years of my marriage I would say, "But honey, Iggy rules" but it came off just the same.  Now we have clearly estabilshed boundaries as to what's acceptable to her, and it's about 5% of my collection, if that.

* Music management.  With about 2,000 pieces I suspect I have a medium to fairly-large collection for an ROer.  Still, with new stuff coming in all the time I can't keep track of what I've got, or what I wanted to listen to yesterday.  I have a couple of dozen "security albums" I've loved all my life, but I always say to myself I must listen to this or that, but I never get around to it, largely because of the spouse situation.

* Where do we store our collections?  Living room, or in boxes in the basement?  Mine take up three walls of the study, my wife's one concession to my "obsession."  (Cheap shot, huh?  Her "obsession" - horses - costs tens of thousands of dollars as opposed to mine which is largely free, yet she somehow gives the shit rather than gets it. )

Please, let's discuss any or all of these issues and we can all improve music time management.  

Then we can get back to jb's birthday.