Complex Numbers

Listen to the Music

Ever notice that there are very few, if any, tolls to go into New Jersey, but a lot of tolls to get out of New Jersey?

My cousin, who has a beach house in NJ, says it's that way because if you charged people to go into the state, no one would visit.

Funny, but a little unfair. A lot of New Jersey is actually quite nice, including his beach house, which is just south of Asbury Park. No, he's never met Springsteen.

Most of the drive was rather pleasant, absent the perpetual traffic jam in the DC area. My one gripe apart from that is that I was forced to listen to commercial radio.

By which I mean, I have to listen to something, and commercial radio was really the only option.

See, on long-distance trips, I was used to plugging in my iPod Touch, setting my vast music collection on shuffle, and just letting it play. I had enough songs to drive all the way across the country and back without ever hearing a repeat.

And now they've discontinued the iPod, or so I've heard, so if mine breaks, I'm fucked. Besides, I don't see a plug for it. Maybe there is one and it's just hard to find. So I did this trip without the iPod to see what options I had, and I am not pleased. But maybe there's an option I'm missing, so here's what I understand about the current sad state of listening to music while driving.

1. Commercial radio. Emphasis on "commercial." Ads piss me off at the best of times, but the week before an American election? Oh boy. Road rage. According to every single ad, the ad purchaser's opponent punches pregnant women, kicks puppies, eats babies, was once caught jaywalking, is unbearably stupid, and will destroy America. The only thing I can glean from this is that no matter who we vote for, they will destroy America. The only choice, therefore, is to pick the one you think will give us the best bread and circuses during our slide into oblivion. (At least I haven't heard any holiday ads yet; those will definitely take over the airwaves after Tuesday).

1a. Apart from goddamned ads, which I can always switch stations for, again, I like to travel cross-country. There are entire swaths of America where the only options are Christian music stations, Christian talk radio stations, broadcast church services, evangelical emissions, country music, or static. I don't mind country music so much, but too much at one time gets real old real fast, so static it would have to be. Which would put me to sleep, not a good idea while driving.

2. Satellite radio. Advantage: lots of formats to choose from, only drops out in tunnels and maybe some mountainous areas (in which driving is perilous enough that I wouldn't get lulled to sleep). Disadvantage: another monthly subscription to pay for, one that I'd only use like 2-3 times a year, max. Bigger disadvantage: also ads (unless they've changed that, which I doubt), and if there's one thing I hate more than ads, it's paying and still having to put up with ads (this is why I never got cable TV).

3. One of those online music services, like Amazon Music or Pandora or whatever the hell is out there right now (I won't get Spotify under any circumstances) on my mobile, which I think (but I'm not sure) I can use while also using the phone's GPS. Advantage: no ads. Disadvantage: there are entire swaths of America without mobile coverage, during which the streaming stops working. Result: asleep at the wheel again.

4. Downloading some tunes on my smartphone (I will take this opportunity to note that my new car has a feature where if you plug in your phone, it'll transfer the GPS (I use Google Maps) to the car's screen for a totally hands-free experience, which is nice). Advantage: doesn't cut out, ever. Disadvantage: I have limited space on the Android, and that space is even more limited if I download offline Google Maps because, again, entire swaths of the country have no cell coverage; consequently, I could fit maybe two albums' worth of music on there. Repetitive.

5. Bring a big stack of CDs and use the car's CD player. Advantages: no ads, never cuts out. Disadvantage: can't shuffle between CDs. Bigger disadvantage: Come on, it's nearly 2023.

Now, I managed to make it to NJ and back without becoming too enraged by the lack of options. This is because that involves driving through areas with good stations: DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia. Basically anywhere in the Northeast Corridor is fine for radio if I can put up with the occasional ads and lame DJ chatter. But eventually, I'm going to want to drive through the Midwest again, perhaps even next month (we'll see).

So, what do people do for driving music these days? And don't suggest listening to recorded books. I don't have anything inherently against them, but they also take up limited smartphone space. Same goes for podcasts, except I don't like them in general anyway. I want to hear music; I want to hear it in random order (radio station programming counts as random as far as I'm concerned); I want no-to-very few ads; and I want the music to not repeat every few hours. My iPod met all those criteria and also had the advantage that I didn't have to fiddle with it while driving.

Without a good setup, I don't know if I can handle a cross-country trip. So... help?