Musical journeys

It's two years now since I got my iPod Shuffle and I don't know how I managed without it! My journey to/from work each day takes about 75 minutes and this is now the main time that I listen to music and catch up with my favourite podcasts.

My regular podcasts are all from BBC Radio 4, and they are In Our Time, From Our Own Correspondent, In Business and The Now Show.

I can now listen to my new albums several times to get to know them and the ones currently on my iPod are the latest ones from Jarvis Cocker, Neil Young, Rammstein and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. I fill the iPod up with old favourites and at the moment I am listening again to Kingdom Come (pictured), Bjork, Placebo, Rainbow, Sparks and various others.

I always listen to my music in shuffle mode which means that 1) if it's a new album then I don't know which track I am listening to and 2) the tracks on an album get played a different number of times. I have evolved a practise which may seem a little anal but which works well for me. Once I have listened to a track from a new album 5 times, or from an old album 2 times, I remove it from the iPod and I add another album once there is space for it. This means that some tracks stay on there for several weeks before they get their 5th/2nd play which leads to a wide variety of music on the iPod but all of it specifically selected at some point.