Interesting realization (with regard to albums)

I just realized that, even with the large collection of music I have, I have only ever listened to 4 albums in their entirety:

Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory

Radiohead - OK Computer

Radiohead - In Rainbows

Daft Punk - Discovery

Everything else is just bits and pieces. It seems a little weird. Is anyone else like this with regard to music? Is it just a product of the fact that tracks can be gotten individually these days, making the "album" something of a relic of the past?

If you're wondering about the two Radiohead albums, I was testing the 01 and 10 theory that's floated around regarding those two albums. I'm not exactly convinced of the theory's merit.

Edit: I still can't get line breaks (like in a list) to work properly!

edited 3rd Nov '13 2:25:09 PM by ntico

I'm the opposite. I almost exclusively listen to albums (in order, in as few sittings as possible) and I've had trouble getting into scenes (like some electronic subgenres) where musicians focus on singles rather than albums. Heck, when I do find a song that I like from an album that I don't like, I'll stick the song in a mixtape and treat the mixtape like an album.

But I'm not exactly a representative music listener.

(You can make a list by sticking a "*" or a "#" at the start of every new line. Then you don't have to double-space them. Or you can force a linebreak with a double forward-slash at the end of every line.)

edited 3rd Nov '13 10:42:00 PM by MetaFour

I'm with Meta Four, but I'm a fairly big metalhead and metal is all about albums. My other favourite genres are prog rock- where the concept album is king and the single can't really happen- and folk, which is pretty much forgotten about singles-wise.

no way man, I have a bunch of albums and maybe 2 or 3 of them are individual songs. Albums are very much important, unless the band has a terribly inconsistent output(like Styx) in which case you go get a greatest hits album.

edited 4th Nov '13 8:29:43 AM by iamathousandapples

Don't bother combining OKComputer with In Rainbows, just listen to it by itself in its entirety over and over and over. That's how I do most of my music listening...

Anyway, I think putting together a cohesive album is one of the great arts of the music world. For me, this has to be the best example of how it's done:

Not too long so that the listener doesn't lose interest, in fact, it's only half an hour; while all of the songs have a consistent sound to them thanks to the overall production, despite the eclectic range of styles found within, from the harsh noise of the opening track to the delightful latin pop pastiche of 'The Trouble With Candyhands'.

Other great examples for me have to be:

• Radiohead - 'OK Computer' (as I already said, that album is pretty much the soundtrack of my life.)
• Cardiacs - 'On Land and in the Sea' (Probably my favourite album, although I try not to listen to it too much.)
• The Trudy - 'Love Ray' (a brilliant and absurdly memorable concept album from the most obscure pop group in history. If you haven't heard of them, which is almost certainly the case, you're missing out. Like The B52's but more melodic. Also, they have the best singer of any band that has ever existed. EVER.)
• Pink Floyd - 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' (I don't love it as much as many do, but I cannot deny the perfection of its structuring and production.)
• Blur - '13' (Perhaps the saddest piece of music that I can bear to listen to, and it lasts over an hour. But it's so beautiful, and so well structured, that I have to include it here.)
• The Chemical Brothers - 'Exit Planet Dust' (Basically one massive track with a couple of individual songs near the end.)

edited 4th Nov '13 12:30:37 PM by porschelemans

Every album I get, I always set aside some time to listen to in their entirety before picking out the pieces I liked the most.

Why not download/buy the singles themselves? And there are also quite a few EPs (especially in terms of Techno music).

edited 4th Nov '13 1:52:41 PM by Quag15

EP's are fine. I used to think they were too short, but I've come to appreciate how a musician can say something with just 15 minutes of music. (These days, I can think of a few filler-bloated albums that would have been greatly improved by trimming them down to EP length.) Also, so many musicians see EP's as "lower stakes" so they tend to take chances that they wouldn't take on an album.

That said, I do still find most singles to be too short for me. When I can, I get the singles and make my own playlist (maybe with other tracks by the same artist, maybe just a mixtape) and then burn that to a CD. Even so, I have a hard time finding the motivation to make those mixtapes these days, so singles tend to fall by the wayside.

Furthermore, there are no genres where I can just sample anything at random and enjoy it. My tastes are arbitrary and even I don't completely understand them. Instead I'll find particular artists I like and explore their discography. So I find it difficult to make inroads into a genre when every time I find a song I like, the musician in question only ever recorded three songs.

If a musician only put out one album before falling off the face of the Earth (Hi, Chasing Furies! Hi, the Monks! Hi, Runforyerlife!) I can at least listen to that album and be satisfied. Singles don't satisfy me—if anything, they make me hungrier.

I see your point. Still, you have compilations and EPs in terms of Techno music and other forms of electronic music.

As for me, I have a bunch of singles and I feel no need to do a mixtape.

I'm like Meta. I feel like listening to most songs on their own without listening to the rest of the album is a kind of heresy most of the time, and it's harder for me to get into single-heavy genres. That said, a great single with a great B-side is always welcome, so long as it feels like a complete package in and of itself.

I'm an album listener. I can't comprehend someone who'd buy an album just to listen to a few songs. The decline of the album listener is a further sign of the music industry's decline.

I tend to hear songs I like and then pick them up. The only album I own in Born This Way. I have listened to probably 5 or 6 Beatles albums in full, but then I only put my favorites on my iPod. My music library is a giant mush where I have 1-3 songs per artist, with a few exceptions.

the album/single dichotomy really depends on the genre

When I first got an iTunes account as a teenager I pretty much exclusively listened to singles, and as my music taste expanded to include older artists I got a lot of Greatest Hits Albums, and that led me to go get the original studio albums. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was the first album that showed me how an album could work as a conceptual unit and not just as a collection of songs. Since I got into the genres of prog rock and metal, which are album-heavy genres, I've become more focused on listening to full albums.

I've also found that I can have greater appreciation for certain songs by seeing how they flow with the other songs on the original album. For example, after listening to Bohemian Rhapsody many times of Queen's Greatest Hits cd, I bought A Night at the Opera and gained a new appreciation for the song because of how it works as the climax of that album. It works much better there than as the first track on the Greatest Hits cd where it is followed by "Another One Bites the Dust".

edited 13th Nov '13 12:41:09 PM by djbj