Do you listen more to tracks or whole albums?

I am wondering how WATMM consumes its music. Do you listen to a whole album or just individual tracks from an album? Or don't you bother with albums at all and just have an assortment of single tracks that you listen to?

I've found that I more often than not listen to a whole album from start to finish rather than just the favourite track(s) from that album. Sometimes it's nice to have my playlist playing at random, though.

Always an interesting talking point. I have spoken out my hatred for the shuffle function for years, only full albums count! That's purely based on the fact that first hearing an ambient track, and then some grindcore track doesn't really fit the mood. I listen to albums when I'm in the mood for them, not to be manic schizophrenic changing my mood every 3 minutes.

Lately though, I've been listening a lot of electro, italo and soundtrack stuff ( anything from https://intergalactic.fm/# basically ) , buying mostly EP's instead of full albums and finding a few favorite tracks on those, so I'm changing my mind lately. I also used my iPod for hours every day, just listening albums, now I hardly ever use it (not commuting 3 hours a day anymore and having a lot less time is obviously one of the reasons, but I don't really miss it)...

I'm also struggling with the fact that I have too much music channels, as in, my mp3's, cd's, iPod, vinyl, youtube (the most laziest format for listening to something), radio, soundcloud, etc. to choose from, so I'm easily distracted (listening an album on vinyl, then browsing and finding something on soundcloud/youtube, having to pause it, blabla). What to do, what to do?!

I sometimes start in the middle of an album and play it in order from there.

I usually have a hear to the whole album at first, but then I choose out the tracks I like best and start hearing more of them. When I listen to music I will usually just shuffle trough my whole library and listen (or not) to whatever comes up. If I'm in the mood I will only hear ambient tracks or just noise, it depends really of how I'm feeling.

i try and empathize with what I imagine the artist would want. some albums I would just feel guilty and disrespectful listening to broken up or out of order. other music has a more casual aura to it and it doesn't matter

You can't beat a good album, and I frequently listen to them in full. However I find that these days I am increasingly fixating on tracks I like and skipping around more. As has been said too, there are a lot of single tracks and short EPs around which lend itself to this.

Sometimes I go on Boomkat, Beatport or something and browse around listening to loads of stuff and I'll load up a basket of 8-10 mp3s that I really liked - blasphemy to many here I'm sure. Sometimes this leads to me going back and buying the original full release of whatever (often in physical format), but other times I go back and listen to other stuff on a release I bought a single mp3 from and decide that I'm still not that into it. So through that I digest a lot of single tracks.

ive quite literally listened to maybe 10 full albums in my life, at most, and i cannot name a single album in which every track is perfect.

classical music is the exception to this, but i dont include it because classical doesnt work in an album format.

I buy albums, listen to the whole thing maybe 3 times, then on 4th playthrough I rate each track. I'll create a playlist for each of my favourite artists and only include tracks i have rated as 5 stars. I also have 'genre-based' playlists.

Some albums are definitely more than the sum of the parts though.

Actress' RIP and King Cresote & Jon Hopkins' Diamond Mine are two recentish examples of albums I much prefer to listen to from start to finish, than to listen to individual tracks

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:17 PM, Ifeelspace said:

I buy albums, listen to the whole thing maybe 3 times, then on 4th playthrough I rate each track. I'll create a playlist for each of my favourite artists and only include tracks i have rated as 5 stars.

that actually sounds like a good system

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:24 PM, GRVGLTCHR said:

 

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:17 PM, Ifeelspace said:

I buy albums, listen to the whole thing maybe 3 times, then on 4th playthrough I rate each track. I'll create a playlist for each of my favourite artists and only include tracks i have rated as 5 stars.

that actually sounds like a good system

That's exactly what I attempt to do, it's fairly time-consuming tough.

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:25 PM, MIXL2 said:

 

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:24 PM, GRVGLTCHR said:

 

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:17 PM, Ifeelspace said:

I buy albums, listen to the whole thing maybe 3 times, then on 4th playthrough I rate each track. I'll create a playlist for each of my favourite artists and only include tracks i have rated as 5 stars.

that actually sounds like a good system

That's exactly what I attempt to do, it's fairly time-consuming tough.

I'll listen twice before choosing, that may speed up the process.

When I'm at my computer just messing around it's 50/50 between tracks/albums. If I'm drawing or writing or something I'll usually leave an album on repeat.

If I'm doing stuff in the house I tend to leave a cd in the stereo and rinse it for a while. Must have listened to Mike and Rich's Expert Knob Twiddlers about 20 times in the last couple of weeks.

Don't really listen to music on portable devices that much.

Albums, preferably where the artist is very purposeful in creating a sound world. I like it to make sense as a body.

That said, there are also perfect tracks that I wish were fleshed out into an album. Especially in instances where I hear the track and it imprints on me, but when I finally listen to the album it is a part of, I feel betrayed as I find that the other tracks do not in any way continue the theme of the track that brought me there.

I tend to shuffle while I'm at home if I'm just doing various things around the house or sitting at the computer for an undefined amount of time.

But 99% of the time I'm playing albums.

  On 2/21/2013 at 7:55 PM, sidewinder said:

I tend to shuffle while I'm at home if I'm just doing various things around the house or sitting at the computer for an undefined amount of time.

 

But 99% of the time I'm playing albums.

I read this wrong....

I think I'm a bad person

I'd say at least 90% of the time I'll listen to the full album/ep. Sometimes when driving or hiking I'll put on select tracks.

Almost always full albums unless im with friends playing some music or im about to do something and can't commit to a full album. If an album only has one song i like on it, i'll delete it and pull up the track here and there on youtube

whenever i get something new i listen to the whole album. but i like to make mixes for my car. just so i can listen to a little bit of everything when im driving.

hardly ever listen to albums anymore, unless it's tim hecker or something where the tracks are a minute long and of a piece. usually i just put my library on shuffle or shuffle the high rated songs in my various playlists. i've also started listening to a lot of compilations, old delta blues and traditional music, and most of those artists didn't release albums. lots of bands i like are singles bands and a lot of the electronic music i listen to is single based as well. can't be bothered with albums anymore, really. it's an arbitrary format and it doesn't suit my listening habits at all.

i am interested to know how people organize their music in terms of playlists and ratings. i have yet to devise a good shuffle system. always ends up very schizophrenic and unfocused, with 2 step bumping up against 50's doo wop or something. sometimes that can be exciting, but usually it's just weird.

according to last.fm I listen to 49 tracks a day on average, this would roughly translate to 3-5 albums (+EPs/Singles) a day which seems about correct. (there's ofcourse occasional off-weeks/days I listen less.)

I like the idea of shuffle-playlists (I see a lot of people with iTunes or Spotify do it) but that seems like a ton of work, I already keep most recordlabels and catalog numbers nicely tagged..

I like to listen to full albums, but I also enjoy just shuffling by genre grouping, and I tend to organize by genre and sub-genre somewhat meticulously so it works out that nothing ever really clashes when I do that. I also have a big playlist of a lot of ambient stuff that I just throw on shuffle at night to fall asleep to many nights. I also enjoy making shuffle-mix playlists for certain moods.

In my iTunes, I have a 5-star smart playlist, and then I have loosely genre-based playlists. I only rate songs if they're 5-star - not sure if I'd really benefit much from rating others.