Having grown up late 90s into the 2000s I went from buying cds to lime wire to spotify.
In the last 6 months I have found such a greater appreciation for just putting on a whole album and listening to it front to back.
I feel there is a huge loss when going from one artist to another to another all random.
Today I am listening to Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come
Listening to album is a way to listen to a full story. While I listen to some Bollywood movie album, it feels like watching the movie again and going through that story
Eh, dont agree. Yeah, I think listening to a whole album is important on occasion and can give a cool perspective. But I’ve found that the range of things I enjoy increases with shuffle. There’s so much stuff that I love… in unexpected short spurts. Im not talking hits, but just random decent stuff. I think there’s something lost when an album has to be good enough that you intentionally pull it off the shelf and listen to it for an hour. Hordes of cool things won’t meet that level.
Albums for entire listening (at least for the first time). Playlists for shuffling non stop.
Mixtapes predate cds by a bit there, kid.
Depending on the album.
Some albums are made like that, as a cohesive work.
Others are just a bunch of songs put together by approximately release date.
Absolutely this.
Now, when I was in High School, I realized that I had owned “The Wall” for 3 months and still never had 90 minutes of consecutive available listening time to listen to it all the way through… parent enforced bedtime was a big part of that, but still… life can be too hectic sometimes.
I’d say most albums are a collection of the songs the band picked out to make it and then arranged in a way that fit the medium back in the day and feels like it makes sense.
OP and others here in the comments are reading way too much into that they have become accustomed to how one song follows another. It’s not like most bands play concerts in the album order either.
Personally I liked making mix tapes for myself from vinyl to listen to individual songs in new orders and I really liked when CDs were introduced and you could play shuffle and bring attention to every song as it was a little surprise every time.
That said, I’m glad you’ve found attentive listening to music, OP. Keep listening to full albums if this helps you do it.
Most, yes. Then you get to producers like Alan Parsons (Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, all of his own stuff…) He’s rare in the industry, but many have followed his style of album arrangement since then.
This is how I listen to music, but also this isn’t a shower thought, it’s just your opinion.
The name of the community is just a suggestion in most of the communities here.
Is that a shower thought?!
Even “suggestion” is putting it strongly!
I had it in the shower listening to an album.
It would make an awesome !unpopularopinion@lemmy.world though.
I don’t think it’s unpopular, I’m also not saying they should be exclusively listened to in album form just that a lot of music i listen to is enhanced by doing the album
As are songs. I have a playlist with about 3000 songs I like in one folder, and it’ll jump through genres from song to song. I like all the songs, so I don’t care about mood changes.
I also find there are album songs on most albums that I like that I don’t particularly enjoy or feel like filler.
Ohh I should try that. Just dump the entire music folder into VLC and shuffle.
Might encourage me to remove the random crap that got downloaded and left in the unsorted folder years ago… Some of it is good, some isn’t.
Try out smart playlists. Plex, navidrome, etc. Let’s you set up a list that will only play songs you havent heard in months
Wouldnt Plex require connection though? Don’t really want to run a Plex server on each device either. VLC is local and I can just periodically sync the music library when on the same LAN.
You can download playlists just fine. I’ll go on vacation all the time and listen offline the whole time.
And you dont need to run a server on each device. Plexamp and/or Symphonium are just apps for your phone. It’s all “local” when the laptop with the server/music and your phone are in your own house, especially navidrome. If you want to hit that server on the internet, thats a homelab project to dip your toes into when you feel like it.
Yeah that’s how I used to be but I feel something is lost with a lot of albums
Maybe back in the day when bands would spend months and months assembling an album that had a generally cohesive style. Now it seems a lot of bands throw a bunch of stuff at the wall hoping something will stick. A good album today is the exception, not the expectation.
Not all art belongs in the Louvre.
That happened back in the day too. Low effort releases are nothing new, we just ignore/forget all the bad stuff and end up with rose-tinted glasses.
Yeah all the music from my youth is good now days is bad (because I don’t remember the bad)
Why I wrote a somewhat bad shuffle utility so sometimes it doesn’t select a random song from my music library but sometimes picks the next neighboring song file for those album-specific messages from the artist.
There’s a handful of songs that I can think of that absolutely benefit from being played with their neighbor on the album they’re from. Some songs really shouldn’t be played with or it the neighbor too. And every so often, my shuffle will put these songs together (and I’ve got a large collection) and it feels like something special has happened.
nothing beats having a wall shelf full of cds <3
Where do you even use CDs these days? Mine is stored on SSDs.
Yeah I’m spewing mine were stolen
This you?
Iirc, Meddle is a bit like this too.
Absolutely, another brick in the wall is awesome to listen too as an album.
I’m annoyed by the remaster i bought on cd that cut the songs in the wrong spot so it would go quiet for for a second af the wrong moment of the song
Agree, The Wall should be listened to from start to end in one sitting in your life at least a few times.
Is there a PF song where that’s not a pretty big exaggeration? I feel it’s actually 1-2 minutes tops in at least most songs
The composition “Shine on you crazy diamond” from the Album “Wish you where here” is what this meme is referring to and has no lyrics for 8min 40sec.
Edit: changed song to composition as it’s 23+ min long
I performed that song in my youth. I’d play the keyboard solo during the intro and then rush to the microphone while holding the final note on the keyboard when the song is about to enter.
Yes, but also no.
There was a time when albums were created by artists with the intent that they should be listened to start to finish.
But at some point albums changes to being a collection of songs trying to be “hits”
Yeah that’s what so fresh was for
Albums as monolithic artistic creations definitely peaked in the 70s-80s, but albums as a simple collection of songs have existed for almost as long as recorded music. Until the late-1960s it was the norm; we’re just experiencing a return to that being the dominant format.
Depends who you are listening to i think. Plenty of artists still writing albums instead of songs.
Yes and no. You gotta listen to the whole thing all the way through at least once. Some albums require repeat listening. Some, you just take the good, toss the bad.
Yep. Nothing felt worse than spending 20€ in a CD and realizing that, apart from the hit single, the rest of it was pretty bad.
Sometimes it takes several listens for me to appreciate a track; sometimes those tracks become my favourites from the album.
If an album only has a couple of songs I enjoy, I tend not to continue following that artist.
For artists that I do enjoy, and I discovered this 40 years ago, I find the best songs on the album are generally not the ones they release as singles.
A couple of years back I was on the tier of music that came with Amazon Prime. One day they decided that listening to albums in order was a premium feature, and if have to pay extra for that.
I suspect Spotify never had as many subscribers sign up as they did that day.
That’s such a wild choice by Amazon but it makes sense.
Here’s something people want, let’s charge for it
Made them an easy cancel for video too, since they’re the only service that has more to gain by removing titles than from adding them.
For many, absolutely! That’s how they were intended, and they deserve it.
Others, it’s just ten songs randomly arranged.
Pretty good litmus test on whether they’re good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
Pretty good litmus test on whether they’re good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
Is a book of short stories or poems not art, just because it is not a monolithic novel.
An Album with 10 independent songs can still be a fully artistic package. Maybe each song is ment to be experience on it’s own. Maybe the art form is to deliver a succinct and complete piece in 3-5 minutes?
If someone took a photograph of the Mona Lisa, do they deserve all the accolades of Da Vinci?
Of course not. Feel free to say thank you for showing this to me, but that’s about all the credit they deserve.
Sorry if you’re a member of Maroon 5, or some other band that purchases random songs and performs them as your own, but to me, that’s the same as taking photos of OTHER people’s paintings and putting them in a coffee table book.
Agreed. There’s so much pointless elitism and snobbishness in this thread; very disappointing from so-called music fans.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
corporate karaoke
Hahaha, I’ll be stealing that!
Yeah that’s what I think too, an album if approached as a whole piece of art is great compared to random singles
