Albums, singles, greatest hits, compilations, playlists - how do you prefer to listen to music?

Cafe Society
1

Prompted by Northern Piper’s thread “Do you listen to albums in a language you don’t understand?”.

An interesting side conversation has come about, between those who prefer to listen to albums, versus the many, many other ways to listen to music.

So what’s your preference, Dear Reader?

I’m still very much in favour of the album, whether that’s a physical LP, CD, or a download that I’ve purchased. I fondly remember LPs in the 70s, when the music was accompanied by a large cardboard square of artwork, credits, and liner notes. At least 50% of my Classical music education (and you can bump that figure to 85 - 90% for rock, folk, and jazz) came from killing time in large record shops like Sam’s or A&A’s, pulling one album out at a time and poring over it, memorizing everything I could glean. While I can find similar information on Wiki, it’s not the same as putting it on the stereo and wandering around the room with the album sleeve in my hand.

Even when the album is just a freeze frame of the current status of a group of musicians, there’s something more interesting about the whole album than just an individual song or two. Especially in jazz, it’s an exploration of what that particular artist can do with that lineup. The Miles Davis/Gil Evans albums come to mind in that context.

And sometimes, the album is like a full length novel, telling a story from beginning to end - one of the things I love about Pink Floyd, early Genesis, Porcupine Tree, and the list can go on indefinitely.

What say you, fellow Dopers?

2

Depends on the album. As you (the OP) say, some of them are a fully integrated tale, and listening to one track is like reading chapter 7 in a good mystery book or something. But not all albums are like that, and there are also some that kind of are but where I don’t care, I like the standalone track anyway.

3

I still like albums. I figure that if the artist has put together a certain package, in a particular order, with different themes, I should listen to it to get what they’re trying to convey. Sure, there are some songs that I might want to hear separately, but I just can’t imagine listening to one song from Sgt Pepper, for instance. Or just the 2nd movement from a symphony.

On my iPhone music, I just have albums. I don’t have individual songs.

4

The only music I have access to these days is Pandora and SXM. So, I get one random song at a time, chosen by someone else.

I know there are ways to get music on my phone, but I haven’t bothered.

5

Generally I download entire albums from iTunes. (Yes, I still use it.). I listen to the whole album once right after I download it. Usually that’s the last time I listen to the whole album. After that it becomes part of my playlist in its genre. Most of the time I listen to my songs on shuffle, so the new songs come up randomly.

An exception is if I’m going to a concert. (I go to a lot of concerts.) Then before I go I’ll play a bunch of the artist’s albums, to refresh my memory.

6

I prefer listening to entire albums, but, paradoxically, I have a problem making the time since I’ve retired.

The thing is, I no longer have a daily 35-minute commute, so not only do I never sit and listen to an album, I am way behind on discovering new music as well as podcasts that I enjoy.

mmm

7

CDs. Usually “The Best of”.

And YouTube.

Oh, and in one car, Sirius radio.

8

Typically albums. Or I’ll listen to BBC Radio 6 to get exposed to a decent mix of music of stuff familiar to me, and stuff I’ve never heard of. And the occasional playlist (auto curated by whatever app I’m using.) I would say it’s about 50% albums, 30% BBC 6 (or similar radio station, like KEXP), and 20% playlist.

9

How do you do that?

10

I generally like to listen to artists’ (for lack of a better term) “officially released” albums in their original form (vs re-issues with bonus tracks/alternate mixes) from beginning to end. There are some compilation albums made up of singles/non-album tracks, (like Odds And Sods or Out-of-State Plates) where I might skip over a track or two.

11

I think it’s through TuneIn Radio app? I just ask Alexa or Siri to play it and she does. I have several music apps, but I’m pretty sure that’s the one it plays through. Oh, I think I originally discovered it through Radio Garden (available online and as an app.) You can play it through there as well.

12

I like albums. Some of my very favorite songs are deep cuts that I would never have heard had I just gotten the singles (or greatest hits, or streamed single songs).

13

I pretty much only listen to my personal digital music collection.

I periodically add to it by doing deep dives into artists I’ve had recommended to me (or otherwise discovered) by listening to their catalog on streaming.

When I discover a song I really like, I buy it and add it to the personal collection that can’t be taken away when the streaming service alters their terms.

14

I got 10s of Thousands of songs on the computer. I load up a usb stick or mp3 with random tracks. I load them by length of track so I get a good variety of stuff. Can load up a few sticks, and never get repeats.

Finally got a decent Pioneer that lets you go ‘Random’ on the usb, so it doesn’t go alphabetically or whatever weird shit the head units do. The JVC’s and Sony’s and Pioneers all seen to do something different.

So, the answer is … Random

15

I’m an album listener probably 90 percent of the time, either at home or in the car. My wife and I are vinyl collectors so at home is pretty much all full albums. I use Spotify in the car.
I do have XM and use it both places for background music or traveling with the kids when we’re going to be chatting and not really able to focus so much on the music.
I just love the experience of listening to a whole album. Even for those that aren’t concept albums in the traditional sense, there is most often an art and a reason for the way they’re sequenced and I find it a better experience to listen to them in the order the artist and producer intended.
Just my two cents. To each his own and YMMV and such. Anyway of listening that gives you joy is the right way for you, in my opinion.

16

Yeah me too. I admit it’s akin to an obsession or constitutes an attitude that’s out of keeping with the actual state of the technology or whatever, but no, I’m totally not storing my stuff on your free server, I don’t trust any of you folks not to change the terms or just cancel your own existence some day. Because it’s happened oh so often. I do echo my most important individual files to server space that I pay for but even that isn’t ever going to be the sole solitary place my stuff gets saved to. It’s a just-in-case thingie for “what if the house burns down”. Otherwise, local storage.

17

would be interesting to post age of the user next to his preferences … (probably strong correlations)

I, mid-50ies … Albums all the way

Kids (teenagers) - playlists all the way … and I still find it mind-boggling that they go from Taylor Swift to Iron Maiden in 3 songs and then come back to Adriana Grande after another 10 mins …

sorry, no … albums it is for me

18

I dislike the word “album”. Sounds like the clear gooey stuff in eggs, and I dislike eggs.

But I do own many albums. I’m as likely to pull one off the shelf, play the one song I want to hear, then put it back as play the whole thing.

19

Is it all that much different from the kind of thing we heard on the radio (or saw on MTV) when we were teenagers?

20

Come gather round, kids - grandpappy’s going to tell you what it was like trying to listen to music in the 1970s in rural Manitoba…

I’m not sure I could give you a complete catalogue of all the available radio signals in Brandon - I’m assuming, for example, that there must have been a CBC French station, but I didn’t speak French at the time, so I know nothing about it.

There were two country stations at various times, which meant a lot of Hank Snow, Charlie Pride, Conway Twitty. They weren’t to my taste, and it was frustrating that there were two of them.

Then, there was 1150 CKX, a middle of the road pop station. Mum always had CBC going in the kitchen, so I’m a little vague on whether it just switched signals at various times, or whether CBC AM and CKX AM were two different stations. You’d hear a bit of country on CKX - John Denver kind of stuff, but mostly it was soft pop like Anne Murray, The Bells, Major Hoople’s Boarding House.

We could usually get an AM station from Winnipeg, CKY 580. That’s the one I remember listening to the most. They had an extended rock format - I remember one weekend when they ‘broadcast’ ‘live’ from ‘Fantasy Park’; a fictitious rock festival that was sold out, and nobody could get to. It truth, they just played nothing but Live albums from different bands all weekend. I remember they were daring enough to play a bit of Yes and ELP, but for the most part, it was a lot tamer than that.

Then there was CBC FM, which was the Classical music channel, and it was quite good. It wasn’t to my taste at the time (though my mum liked it and consequently, it was on quite often), but the quality of the programming was outstanding! Now that I’m interested in classical music, I mourn the loss of such an outstanding network. (It hasn’t disappeared, but it’s gone from being constant programming of classical masterpieces to having only three hours a day of lite classical. Other kinds of music have replaced it, and some of it is quite good indie singer/songwriter material, but much of it is middle of the road pop and rock. I can hear Neil Young anywhere, we didn’t need to bump Brahms and Penderecki to hear that.

Then there was CITI FM from Winnipeg - it was hard to get unless the clouds were just right, but when they got a repeater antenna, that was a great station for hard rock and some prog.

But each station was held to a fairly strict format - MOR for ‘middle of the road’ which was CKX’s designation, Country, AOR for ‘Album-Oriented Rock’ which was CITI’s designation, AOR* for All Over the Road, which was CBC’s informal designation.

At any rate, my friends and I were so used to the local radio stations never playing our favourite music that we got used to buying albums and sharing them around. Or, making a point of visiting different people’s houses and listening through their collection. I had some of the weirdest stuff among my friends - ELP, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Yes, Frank Zappa, along with fusion like (electric period) Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, Return to Forever - and that was all stuff you heard rarely, if ever, on radio.

So, no, where and when I grew up, there was no radio station that would play both Taylor Swift and Iron Maiden, let alone within three songs. As a result of that, it was pretty rare to discover someone who would have been into both of them (or their 70s equivalents).