Do you mostly shuffle or listen to full albums?

[Prowler]

They say there's two types of music listeners: those who shuffle and those who only listen to full albums.

...well I'm a mix of both. You see, first of all, I always try to listen to an album or two a day when I'm in a big kick for music and happen to have spare time for it. It also helps that music is something that you can listen to while doing other activities. On weekends and holidays I can listen to several albums in a day. And ofc, it also depends on how long each album is. A lot of 9-10 songs albums are like 45 minutes long at best. It's definitely doable listening to 10 full albums like that on a weekend.

I rarely listen to full albums outside unless it's an album I've already heard several times before and I'm going on a long walk or gonna spend a long time outside. I rarely go on long car rides, but the rare times I do I'll definitely be listening to music on my phone along the way(no I'm not the one who drives). Anyway, outside there's usually too much noise going on and I'm focused on walking and going to my destination. So the music serves more as some sort of background noise. When I want to listen to an album I haven't heard before I pay more attention to it, so I'd rather do that at home instead of on my way to work or something.

I also shuffle at times when I'm at home. Sometimes after a full album or two I'll shuffle some of my favourite songs for a while. I've gotten to a point where I listen to various genres and start missing other genres and songs after listening to a single genre for a couple of hours.

And it also depends on the genre, tbh. I generally find extreme metal and jazz to work better when I listen to it by album than by single songs. While classic rock, grunge rock thrash metal, traditional heavy metal, pop and synthwave work fine in shuffle mode. Classical is a mixed bag. Some tracks work fine as standalone tracks, but others are clearly meant to be listened in the context of a symphony. A lot of progressive rock also is meant to be listened to by album. Pink Floyd being the most notable example.

What about you?

[CyberCubed]

I never listen to music.

[AquaParade]

Having digital music drove me towards listening to my music on shuffle at least 50% of the time. I follow a lot of artists though, so when someone releases an album I am excited about, I'll listen to it front to back quite a bit, before it becomes part of the shuffle mix.

One funny thing about having my music on shuffle, is it actually becomes really difficult to settle on a song if I began to overthink it. I have to just put the thing on shuffle, put the screen down, and sink into the song. If I try to be choosy, nothing will appeal to me.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I never listen to music.

I imagine you get a lot of stunned or shocked replies when you say this. I've heard others mention they don't like music, and it can be quite surprising, but hey, why not? If you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it.

[Whatswiththeheadbands?]

Pretty much almost always listening to full albums or EPs.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

Having digital music drove me towards listening to my music on shuffle at least 50% of the time. I follow a lot of artists though, so when someone releases an album I am excited about, I'll listen to it front to back quite a bit, before it becomes part of the shuffle mix.

One funny thing about having my music on shuffle, is it actually becomes really difficult to settle on a song if I began to overthink it. I have to just put the thing on shuffle, put the screen down, and sink into the song. If I try to be choosy, nothing will appeal to me.



I imagine you get a lot of stunned or shocked replies when you say this. I've heard others mention they don't like music, and it can be quite surprising, but hey, why not? If you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it.

I love Spotify because it means I have millions(billions?) of songs and artists in my pocket and can play them anytime. It's not a perfect service and ofc not every single artist has their work in there and sometimes some albums and songs are missing, but it's by far the best music streaming service I've ever seen. And I don't need to download anything. The premium is well worth it and it's all legal.

Originally Posted by AquaParade

I imagine you get a lot of stunned or shocked replies when you say this. I've heard others mention they don't like music, and it can be quite surprising, but hey, why not? If you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it.

Well, actually, he's not the only person in the world like that. He most likely didn't mean that literally. Everyone likes music to some degree. He plays video games so I'm sure he loves a lot of video game music. Just like he likes the FW TMNT background music. What he most likely means is that he doesn't care about bands and going out of his way to listen to music. I've met a couple of people like that before. I used to be one of those people until around my 18th birthday, in fact. I liked a lot of random songs by The Beatles and a few other bands when I was a kid/teenager, but I mostly listened to video game OSTs and cartoon openings. I remember being in HS and hearing classmates all talking about their favourite bands and such and talking about going to concerts and I couldn't relate to any of that.

[Coola Yagami]

Full album on day of purchase, shuffle through faves afterwards.

I remember those days. The thing that kinda sucked is that it seemed the only good songs on the cd were the ones shown on MTV videos or the main song that made you buy it to begin with. Everything else is just filler.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Full album on day of purchase, shuffle through faves afterwards.

I remember those days. The thing that kinda sucked is that it seemed the only good songs on the cd were the ones shown on MTV videos or the main song that made you buy it to begin with. Everything else is just filler.

Well, that depends on what artists you listen to. Usually with the major pop singers that's what happens. But there's tons of great and consistent albums from head to toe out there in a lot of different genres. Some artists are definitely better at making songs than albums, though. Iron Maiden are generally considered to be a band that makes great songs but not one that makes great albums. Because most of their albums always have a couple of filler songs which aren't bad, but hardly on par with their best songs.

Also, I feel like often some of the best songs aren't that popular. And that often as well one of the most popular songs by an artist is one I don't really like/care for much. I don' like Breaking the Law by Judas Priest much, but really love Desert Plains. Stairway to Heaven isn't even in my top 10 of favourite Zeppelin songs and I don't like Walk by Pantera. Back to Maiden, Fear of the Dark and Aces High are rather overrated songs, imo.