Some of you are giving musicians a whole lot more credit than I do. Sure there are concept albums where the whole album has been finely crafted; there are a whole lot more albums where the majority of the songs were knocked off in a night to fill out the rest of the space around the songs they put a lot of time and effort into. On the other hand, disregarding great songs because the whole album isn’t great is a fairly silly thing to do - it’s not like you can’t enjoy one or two songs and just ignore the rest.
I’ve always been an album guy myself. It depends on the artist, but most of the time, if I like a single, I want to explore the rest of the work, and I want to hear the single in the context of an album. I find that my favorite tracks are often deeper album cuts that never get any airplay.
It isn’t that the rest of the album isn’t good, it’s that only some of the songs are the ones I want to have. I like being able to buy music this way. It’s like going to a smorgasbord as opposed to a sit-down dinner party. I can pick out what fits my diet (and my wallet) and not have all of those extra songs taking up space on my plate or leaking into the mashed potatoes.
Whole albums; some songs need a few listens but they might become your favourites.
If you only bought the ones you liked on first impressions, you might miss an awful lot of good songs…
That’s a good point. My current method is to give a thorough listen to full albums on Spotify and then purchase the songs I like from iTunes.
I’m a singles guy. I love a good album, but nobody makes good albums anymore.
Then you either must not be looking very hard, or there’s a particular style of music and album you like (perhaps a concept album), as there’s still plenty of brilliant albums still being produced.
Don’t see the point of albums without the liner notes and such. Cherry.
Cherry pickers. I have almost never found a whole album I liked - there’s always at least some songs that are lower in quality.
Albums (though I rarely buy download-only music).
I like to be informed about the styles, bands, and eras I listen to, and I think it’s impossible to be informed about music by just listening to singles.
I buy a lot of $5 albums from Amazon. Like, way a lot. I can’t pass up such a deal.
I definitely cherry-pick some songs that I’d like on my workout playlist or something but the vast majority of what I have is albums.
Well, an even split so far. I’m a little surprised. I would have thought the cherry pickers would be in the clear lead by now.
If it’s a band I like, I download the whole album. If it’s a new band to me, I listen to the samples, and then decide based on several factors:
– I definitely download the kick-ass songs
– If the rest of the songs seem good, I download the whole album
– If the rest of the songs are bad, I don’t
– If they’re just okay, then it depends on how good the good songs are (since the bad songs might then grow on me with a good band,) and how much I will save if I buy the whole album.
This, emphatically. If I like a song well enough to spend money on it, I want to see what else its creator has come up with, and what context they’ve put it in.
Many, many of my favorite songs are songs that I’d ever have heard of if I hadn’t bought the album on which they appear.
Whole album, since I use a subscription service.
If I were actually paying 99 cents or so per song, I’d cherry pick (and listen to a hell of a lot less music).
It depends on the artist. Some musical acts are capable of writing a full album worth of quality material that I’m willing to buy to explore previously unfamiliar tracks. Most musical acts are not so capable, and I’ll either cherry-pick or go for a greatest hits compilation.
With some exceptions, albums.
I generally don’t purchase digital music, but in my view, if an artist can’t put together an album where I want to own most or all of the songs on it, they’re highly unlikely to be an artist I’d like, muchless want to support.
Even for ones where I only really got into them because of a couple songs, I’m still generally happy to own the whole album because I’ll often find other songs on there that I like as much or more. In fact, I often find that the single off of albums from my favorite artists are often the ones that are most marketable, often because of being more accessible and shorter in length, but when I hear the whole thing it’s often not the best song on the album. There’s more than a few albums where I can actually say the single is probably the worst song on the album.
In short, unless you’re listening to the type of artists that put lots of filler on their albums, which in my view means they’re probably poor artists to begin with, cherry-picking means you’re probably going to miss a lot of good stuff you otherwise would never have heard. So, even if you are going to cherry-pick, I’d still recommend at least trying to get a couple listens to the full album before settling on that option.
ETA: I’m also a big fan of the idea of concept albums or at least a flow to the album. In that sense, there’s often going to be a lot missed, even if there’s only a couple good songs on the album. But that’s also another mark of a quality artist, where an album isn’t just a collection of songs they’re written since their last album, but that they tie together in some way.
That assumes that the artists have creative control over what goes on their albums. It might speak to their performance ability in that they’re not able to turn a mediocrely written song into a passable one, but it’s not their fault if they noodle around in the studio and know that the majority of their stuff isn’t up to snuff, but the studio decides to release a lot of it anyway.
I rarely bought singles and preferred whole albums, and would normally listen to the whole album (or copy the whole album to tape for the boom box or walkman) rather than playing one song at a time or making mix tapes.
So with the advent of digital music, I still prefer whole albums. The only time I can recall cherry-picking digital music was to complete albums with songs that I already had in box sets or other compilations.
When I got an iPod, I chose the “Shuffle Albums” option.
However, the WinAmp app on my Android phone doesn’t shuffle by album, and in the interest of conserving space on the HD card I cherry-picked favorites for shuffling. But other than that, when listening to anything new, I’ll listen to the whole album.