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
I think both types of listening have their place. Especially when listening to music from the era when music was made with the intention of it being heard as an album in its entirety. Like literal albums is a method of playback where you are typically listening to at least a whole side of the album, you wouldnt be skipping around. CD players even you were likely to listen to more than one song of the album, just because it would require changing the CD vs letting it play.
Most music made after the proliferation of MP3s isnt really made in that same vein. Usually at most you get the “concept album” or something where an artist delves into a particular type of music. Those are still cohesive albums, but it’s also very different from something that is literally more or less one piece of music a la Dark Side of the Moon or something like that.
Most modern albums are more of a collection of songs at best, and they may not have much similarity or relevance to each other. Take the Black Keys for instance. They mostly do albums by genre that they want to try making. So the songs have a related sound, but listening to them is more like picking out whatever you like and would want to hear again. I wouldnt listen to the album straight through other than the first time I hear it. They songs aren’t connected in an important way other than being the same genre
you didn’t change cds. it had many tracks. you just skip to the one you want. 8 track worked that way to but it never took off.
Yes. What I was trying to say is that MP3 players were the first media player that you could have a ton of different artists music on. Yeah there were mix tapes and mix cds but it wasnt as easy as mp3s made it to have so much music in one player. Having to physically change a cd, or an actual album, made it more likely for people to listen to larger sections of entire albums before changing artists.
Once people could have the diversity of the radio (or a giant mix tape) but with the press of a button we ended up kind of killing off the point of making a cohesive album. All attention is focused on individual tracks now more than ever. It was a slow death though that incrementally progressed alongside technology
oh duh. yeah it would only be songs from that artist and album. I get it now.