Anyone listen to entire albums?


I assume the answer is yes since many of you run vinyl rigs, but just wondering how many around here listen to entire albums at a sitting?  In the age of instant gratification and playlists I seem to be, recently, gravitating to listening through entire albums.  I don’t have vinyl and only stream or play from a network drive so it’s easy for me to bounce around from song to song, artist to artist.  Maybe it’s a nostalgia thing but I enjoy hearing a record in it’s entirely the way the artist recorded it.  I’ve flirted with the idea of vinyl for the very reason that it seems to be a format that lends itself to listening through an entire album in one sitting.  I seem to be less inclined to make that move though now that I’ve been doing the album thing via streaming. 

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I grew up right at the crossover from vinyl to cassette tape so I never really got into vinyl.  I have wonderful memories of listening to the radio, particularly at the community swimming pool, all through the seventies.  I think that’s what draws me to vinyl even though I’ve never put that into my system.  I can remember back in the 80’s listening to a cassette and longing for a way to just hear or buy the one song I really loved. Then mixed tapes became a thing but you still had to buy the entire album not just the song. Streaming has more than scratched that itch and it’s been the way I’ve streamed music for the most part. Being intentional about listening to an album, warts and all, has been a fantastic addition to the way I listen to music. Seems like most of you do something similar wrt listening to albums. Some have the same habits when streaming of bouncing around or skipping the song(s) that is not appealing. Streaming has also opened up so many more genres I would never have indulged in if buying each album was required. I can also build a playlist of every album by a particular artist and listen to each album all the way through, which I am doing right now with a Steely Dan playlist.

As a rule, I only buy/keep cds I enjoy all the way through.

I've made my own anthologies of artists whose albums are inconsistently appealing to me, such as Led Zep and Rory Gallagher but these are very much exceptions and I rarely play them. 

 

 

on that "when I grew up right around CDs" angle:

when and where I grew up, an album cost 2 weeks' salary. A turntable would cost twice that. Most people had 10 or 15 records total. (One for Christmas and one for a birthday - slowly adding up) We were poor so we didn't have a turntable. When I started working, I could afford to buy a used one. I also bought my friend's record collection about 30 albums (he was super rich - for us). 

When your monthly paycheck buys you 2 albums, it better be good to listen to every side and song. 

 

I grew up listening to vinyl so I still listen to albums in their entirety even though I dumped my vinyl decades ago in favor of CDs. The only exception is when I’m streaming in the car or at the gym. 

When my vinyl rig was working, I generally listened to albums straight through. Now that I'm forced to listen to CD's, I have to admit I skip around if I don't care for particular tracks.