How do I listen to music on a plane?!

[NetflixWithoutFriendsIsWrong]

Explain this to an old dinosaur will you?! At home I just flick on YouTube and type in whatever song I want to listen to! I only have the radio in the car.

I don't know anything about downloading or Spotify etc etc. It's a 9 hour flight, I don’t really want to rely on in-flight entertainment. Just want to kick back and close my eyes with a couple of MJ and Bowie albums at my own choice.

HOW? 🙈 I only have a basic smart phone and some ear pods that connect via blue tooth. I could just about set that up!

Bring back the Walkman. I don't belong here. I'm only 41!

Well there you go - surprised and now educated. A productive night on MN all round.

I hope you are not a teacher 😂

Honestly so what if someone doesn’t know everything. Some of my favourite people are clueless about lots of things. Myself included 😁

Definitely not a teacher, wouldn't have the patience 😂

It's not a big deal if someone doesn't know everything (never said it was) but I guess for me it's just something that seems so, so basic. If you can post on a forum (which is, IMO, more complex than using Spotify etc). then surely you can use an app!

Don't be a knob.
Spotify will only be relevant until the next way of getting you to buy music . Lots of us never got interested in software that that requires subscriptions or expensive kit.
My DS uses a MP3 player he re wired for free music. He uses open source communication and despite his degree in Computing prefers old school tech.

Just before you get too excited about being able to do this or that, do check that your phone is able to download this or that. Eg, my phone can’t download BBC Sounds app at all.

Regardless, if you can post on here, you can Google or work out how to use very simple phone apps.

More to the point, if you have children, you need to make bloody sure you know how things work, or they’ll be running rings around you and you’ll have no idea how to deal with anything before you know it.

@25flyby Come on Spotify is hardly expensive software and most people have a smart phone to be able to function in day to day life.

i think it’s a bit pathetic that a 41 year old (same age as op) can’t work out how to download music from an App.

I have a smart phone and function fine in day-to-day life, and I can’t download Spotify. I just tried now out of curiosity and it won’t download.

As already suggested OP, I vote you get an old iPod and buy the stuff you want! No need for people to be rude about it - choosing not to stream is, well, a choice. I choose not to use a streaming service. I buy the music I want to listen to from iTunes. DH pays £11.99 a month for Spotify - I could download 15-20 albums a year for that, they're mine forever and I can listen wherever I want to. I also have loads of CDs downloaded years ago - many were free as I worked in the classical music industry. Incidentally many streaming services are absolutely rubbish for classical music.

I'm in my 60s & I download from BBC sounds or Audible onto an SD card on my tablet. I've also got my entire music collection that I ripped from CDs back in the noughties, and that I've kept up to date as I buy music via MP3s
I've also got a card with various films and TV series on it that I've downloaded. I take the tablet on holiday and swap the cards as necessary.
I never use Spotify - DH has an account but I can't be bothered with it.

I realised a few years ago that it's often got nothing to do with ability it's time. I rolled my eyes at kids programming video recorders for my parents generation and thought that will never ever be me needing my kids to do that, but have since got my adult ds to set up new devices at times because I simply have not got the time to do it. I could have done it if I'd had to but just didn't have time. Another thing is that people talk about things being universal, but paradigms do change, and when you're busy and haven't yet needed a service I'm not sure it's natural to be up on all the fine details of how different providers implement it when it might change again anyway.

Right, but that's not actually what you said in your original post though. People aren't mind readers!

And I think you read an awful lot into my question 😅

A free alternative to Spotify is BBC Sounds- you can download playlists, podcasts, audio books etc

Yeah but the actual question was about how to listen on a plane. Presumably the actual concern was around connectivity.

Once someone said “download it and you can just listen”, Op was fine.
Its not that the technology is difficult, it’s just knowing what’s out there and not paying a fortune for it.

@NetflixWithoutFriendsIsWrong
Sorry, see you just replied in a similar vein.

MN is a good example of people using tech differently. People often don’t know the ins and outs - don’t read all the Ops replies, still place mark, don’t know you can read previous edits etc.
When MN renovated the site it was carnage. We were all capable of using it but stuff had changed and we had ask how bits works and where other bits went.