A New Way Of Listening

Introduction

When I travel by train, I often take my Kindle and use it to read and play Backgammon and Othello. I also have BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Intagram and other streaming services.

Most of them allow you to download programs, but I forget, and then have to stream. I thought I would listen to something on YouTube, but Northern and Transpennine Express do not allow video streaming on their trains, so I was stuck.

I had not been able to get my wireless earphones to connect up to the Kindle, and after a lot of experimentation, I found that the Kindle will only connect if the earphones are not connected to any other device. Connecting to my phone immediately breaks the connection to the Kindle.

Then I wondered if Instagram would work, and it did, probably because they treat it as a still image service.

It did, and this is what happened.

Listening on Instagram

Music playing on the Kindle is awkward, and I detest almost every streaming service apart from Bandcamp, but I often share the music I play on Instagram with the hashtag #OnThePlayerNow and there are over 1,100 posts, I think all by me.

The one in the lead image is here:

Instagram allows you to add ninety seconds of music to your post, although you can also do reels and use your own recorded sound.

What I realised is that I could skip through my Instagram posts and listen to 1.5 minutes of generally excellent music I have chosen to accompany them.

I was quite shocked by how quickly the journey passed by doing this, both Preston to Carlisle and Carlisle to Newcastle flew by.

The video I have included is an example of what I did, except that when I am on the train, I listen to it on my headphones, whereas the video uses the Kindle speakers, although this could be any tablet that can access Instagram and has an internet connection, either built in or by shared wifi.

This is my Kindle:

These are the wireless earphones that I use:

So What Was I Listening To?

I have done a few posts documenting my #OnThePlayerNow choices, which are fairly random, but you can check them out here:

So I will share a few of my choices, starting with the first one that you hear in the initial video that I shared with you here.

The Fall - "Victoria"

A cover of the Ray Davies-penned Kinks classic. I love Mark E Smith's voice, so disdainfully aggressive. This was to accompany a Nightcafe challenge for "Forbidden Victorian Love", which is a bit difficult considering they don't want anything classified as NSFW.

Shane MacGowan with Sinead O'Connor - "Haunted"

This is one of the most beautiful songs ever, and I used it to accompany this image, which I created for some reason that I have forgotten.

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - "The Tracks Of My Tears"

I used this to accompany the Instagram post of my vinyl copy of Motown Charbusters Volume 3 on my record player. I do love the effect of the cover, and this song has always been a favourite of mine.

Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"

When I was in Whitby, I saw two Goth ladies shopping at the Co Op. I thought that was quite amusing and asked if I could take a photo and share it, and they said yes, so they got "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus. I'll use this to close this short playlist.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading and listening, and I would love to know what you think of this, or if I am just being weird.

I was not sure which community this should go in, as it was caused by travel and technology, but I suppose the main focus is music, so therefore it goes in BEAT.