For audio while working I like last.fm:
- it's great for ambient, jazz, world, and instrumental/non-vocal generally
- it runs well on linux and in firefox (both of which I use)
- it's free in the US
However they recently switched to a YouTube-based player, which combines video and audio, increasing the service's bandwidth. Can the video bandwidth be reduced, ideally to zero? Some things I've tried that don't work completely:
- FlashBlock. With the old last.fm player I could FlashBlock the video portion of the player, but the new player will play neither audio nor video unless I whitelist youtube.com, in which case I get both the video and audio.
- YouTube player settings--i.e., the gear icon. This allows one to set video quality (e.g., 144p, 360p), so I tried just setting to the lowest quality/bandwidth=144p. This works for awhile, but seems to regularly reset itself to higher quality.
- YouTube account settings. I had hoped one could set the default video quality to, e.g., 144p. However, the best one can do is set "Never play higher-quality video" which seems to allow any setting below HD.
