Whats even less convenient is opening up Spotify on a road trip to listen to some Sum 41, and finding out most of their catalog has been removed.

I agree that CDs have too much friction though. Theres no easy pathway from “I like this album” to listening in the car/stereo. Especially for someone who is constantly discovering music and keeping up with new releases from artists.

First of all, not all releases are even available on CD. Even if they were, I would be spending thousands of dollars per month for the amount of music I listen to. Not to mention the lead time from ordering CDs which could take a couple weeks or more to arrive. And then I can’t even listen in my new car anyway cause there’s no CD drive.

I like hi-res lossless audio files. I can load them up on a USB and plug it into the car. I don’t have to mess around with Bluetooth at all. It’s easier to get the music too. And it sounds better. And it can’t be taken away. And is cross platform. And its free!

Btw I like supporting artists, especially the less popular ones. If I like your stuff, Ill buy some merch. But thats after I have the music.

Not GP. But a decade ago, my brother’s car didn’t have bluetooth. We burned down a few mixes on CD and that was ok for long trek during town. He replaced that unit but we still used those CD from time to time. It was simpler than deciding which phone to connect.

Even today, while I use spotify on my work computer, it’s basically the same albums every day (around a dozen). Playing CDs would be probably better than switching to the UX disaster that is Spotify

> And, I personally find the quality of YouTube Music Premium (256kbps AAC) superior to FM radio.

When it comes to playing music from phones in cars, connection type seems to matter more than the source, and iOS has some weird built-in sound normalization only for CarPlay that drives me crazy.

In my Audi A3 (2018), if I connect my iPhone 12 Mini via AUX or Bluetooth, sounds works perfectly fine. Same when playing via CD or USB stick inserted into the car, no problem. FM radio also works well, regardless of volume.

However, if I play music via CarPlay (Spotify [lossless], YouTube, on phone .flac files, etc) some built-in sound normalization seems to kick in and suddenly it ruins the music when playing even slightly louder.

I've tried for years to figure out what the hell is going on, tried every setting under the sun, but cannot get it to work so only thing left is some built-in sound ruinification ("normalization") that Apple does, only when played via CarPlay, not when playing via AUX or Bluetooth.

Seems to happen with every car I try it with, but I never tried a different phone. So right now I'm choosing between being able to have GPS or listen to music properly, as I cannot do both at the same time...

My 2012MY car has Bluetooth, but only for calls/interruptions not for music so I've been using USB sticks still. It has a navigation system but the map DVDs are so weirdly expensive that I have never updated the maps. I'm at the point where I don't always trust the nav system to get me somewhere and use my phone. I leave the car's map up if I want to glance at it to double check, but also assume some of the roads are wrong now. The biggest thing I miss is "next turn info" in the driver cluster, but the Apple Watch has a version of that. It's still less convenient to glance at my watch instead of the driver cluster, but still better than glancing at my phone or having to mount my phone somewhere.

CarPlay sounds fantastic but right now all the manufacturers I'm looking at for "next car" don't support it. I keep thinking if I never experience it first hand I'll not be disappointed if the "next car" doesn't have it. Bluetooth for music might be enough of an upgrade for me. It seems interesting to me this pendulum swing in "every car has CarPlay" to "manufacturers don't trust CarPlay" has happened within the time period of me owning a single car. It probably says something about the car life cycle.

Seconding this. Who knew that the time an old CRT took to warm up would seem like an instant compared to the boot time of a 75” flatscreen introduced 35 years later? :[

I miss dumb TVs so much.

Your comment got downvoted for being flippant but I agree. It's an interesting discussion but it really comes off as grandstanding. Doesn't address the main thrust of the article nor the comment to which it replies.