I received a couple of gift certificates to the iTunes Music Store over Christmas and put them to use yesterday. I purchased Cake’s Fashion Nugget, R.E.M.'s Murmur and John Mayer’s Heavier Things.
My question is, once you’ve bought an album, how do you listen to it? Do you sit and listen to all the tracks, in order, over and over? Do you pick and choose songs? If you buy more than one album at once, do you listen to them all equally? Do you just stick them in your MP3 playlist and wait for them to randomly pop up?
I tend to listen to one album at a time, a few songs at a time. For example, at the moment I’m listening to the Cake album and the songs “The Distance” and “I Will Survive” over and over again. Then, once I’ve listened to them enough to get them out of my head, I start to listen to the other songs and they grow on me and the process repeats.
I get the disc out and put it in the CD player. Press play, listen all the way through. Contemplate, while looking at the cover art and reading the liner notes.
Sometimes, I take the platter out and put it on the turntable. Contemplate, while looking at the cover art and reading the liner notes.
Any new album I procure tends to be the only album I listen to for a while. then it goes into the general pile. Mainly listen to them whilst on the old exercise bike.
I wait at least a day after I buy the album, just to get in the mood. Then I listen attentively, focusing on the album. I might immediately replay one or two tracks that struck me. I look at the art, I look at the lyrics (when appropriate). After that, it goes in the rack and gets out whenever one of us feels like it. If the music is suitable for the car, I burn a copy and put it in the car CD wallet.
I try to find a chance to listen straight through while checking the lyrics. I’m very careful about not repeating stuff for a while. I’ve done that before and truncated good CDs by thinking there are 3 good tracks. Later when driving I have discovered the whole thing is good.
I only listen to one album at a time (even if I’ve bought more than one) and generally let it play from beginning to end while doing something else, so I’m only really listening to it subconsciously. And then, if I’ve really been hooked by a song, I might listen to that over and over, followed by a different song when I get bored of the first, and so on and so forth.
I’ll give the entire CD a listen-through from start to finish. If I really like a particular song along the way I may go back and re-listen to it a time or two before proceeding to the next one. If the song isn’t that great I’ll give it a minute or so before giving up and skipping to the next track. When I am done I’ll go back and listen to the favorites one more time before moving on to another CD. Once I’ve determined which tracks I like and which ones are dogs I can skip over, I’ll restrict my listening to the ones that make the cut.
I used to listen to it all the way through, with great concentration. Now I just rip the entire thing to my computer’s hard drive and let the songs show up in rotation, as the random number generator deems fit.
I’ll listen to the whole CD while doing work. I might listen to it twice that way, as background music. Then I’ll wait for an opportune moment of peace and quiet, and put it on headphones while doing nothing else, except possible gaze at the stars. That way, I know enough of the album’s terrain, without being overwhelmed by new material, to get a good deep look into the album.
Then, I’ll usually play it over and over again until I can’t stand it anymore.
Current album undergoing this process: Sun Kil Moon, Ghosts of the Great Highway. It’s standing up to it nicely.
My favorite way is to put it in a 5-CD changer and listen to them all randomly while I’m doing other things (housework or being online, usually), so that the new tracks pop up among the familiar tracks.
I usually put it in my Discman and listen to the tracks in order. You hear the songs in the order they are intended to be heard (occasionally that’s actually quite important) and you get the hang of the track names quickly that way as well.
Then I rip the songs I like off the album to my computer hard drive and play them along with the rest of my digitised music as I use my computer. I also put them on compilation CD-Rs with other songs that I like by other artists (I like to mix artists)
I seldom use the shuffle function to listen to an album.
If it’s good, it goes into the golden rotation (in my 5 disc changer). I’ll listen until I get sick of it, throw it in the pile and pick it up a few months later.
I listen to it once and (usually) it doesn’t meet my expectations so I shelve it. Six months to a year later I listen to it again and, if I like it then, I play it over and over and over again until I’m thoroughly sick of it.
The cd start to end, with my good headpones on, lying on the couch in the dark. Somehow listening in the dark allows me to concentrate on the music and nothing else but.
Having time to allow for this doesn’t happen often, so mostly its in my cd player (or most recently, my iPod) on the way to/from work. But still in order. I know that artists spend time figuring out the flow of music so I like to listen to it the way they intended before I shuffle or skip tracks.