Listening to albums in their entirety...
 

I'm a purist in the sense that I believe a recording should be listened to all the way through. Many recordings ebb and flow in a way that is lost when songs are cherry picked. The journey the artists wants to take you on is missed. I know that with the advent of buying by the song many people never listen to entire albums anymore. I really think it's a shame. I pretty much only listen to entire recordings. This also makes me a very picky buyer as I won't buy anything that I don't like the majority of.

Some recordings will blow you away, but only when the impact of the entire recording is experienced. There's so much to this idea. Often a slow ballad is the perfect rest from a blasting song that preceeded it. Other times, the entire recording will be themed and the theme goes unnoticed with just a song or two. I know there are advantages to the cherry picking method, but I'd never switch.

Thoughts?

I think it depends on the album. Though I am overall an "album" kind of person, there's a lot of music out there that was never particularly intended to be digested in album form.

I don't have a single song in my music collection. Everything is in album format. I do prefer to listen to whole albums as opposed to individual songs or select groups of songs, but there are definite exceptions to this.

One thing that I point out frequently on this forum is that the full length album format, or LP is only about 50 years old, less than half the span of time of recorded music history. it wasn't until about the early 70's that artists began creating music with the holistic intention of it being appreciated as not only a collection of individual songs, but also as a greater more inclusive work.

Basically there are albums that are strictly a collection of individual songs an albums that can only be appreciated in the wider sense of a musical suite.

... Yeah. All of this. You guys got to it before I could :banghead:

Personally, it wasn't until I began to digest albums in their entirety that I began to actually become passionate about it. Beforehand, it had simply been 'play a few Floyd and Led Zeppelin songs while you play Runescape' or something, but once I actually got around to investing time and thought into the music, was around when it started to give back to me too. That sort of coincided with when I started torrenting in place of Limewire-ing, so that I could get full albums more easily. So I owe A LOT to torrenting.

There are some exceptions (with power violence for example, I generally listen to it in snippets), but in general, I've been an album person for basically my entire 'music-listening' life.

Pretty much everything that's already been said, really.

There have been instances where I've heard a single song on a mix a friend was playing, or songs that I'm really familiar with I've put into mixes myself, but for the first listen especially, I much prefer listening to an album in its entirety.

I also listen to a lot of live shows (Phish, The Grateful Dead, Trey Anastasio, Gov't Mule, The Disco Biscuits, etc.) and find it difficult to listen to individual songs from the shows, preferring to listen to the entire concert from beginning to end in one sitting.

I think I just prefer having the whole package and not just little pieces of it.

I'm more or less ambivalent about the whole thing. While I do appreciate albums in their entirety, I guess I'm used to singles as well... having a background in a lot of Electronic music that is often released as singles.
I actually like to take singles by a single particular artist and arrange them into an album of my own making, based on what I think the flow should be, pretty much like a mixtape. It's rewarding but by no means a necessity for me.
I'm likely to put an entire genre folder on shuffle before I'm likely to listen to an entire album if it's not something I just acquired and am trying to get a feel for.

For me, the package is whatever you want it to be. I've remixed songs in my library just because I wanted to hear them differently. I respect artist's original intentions, but I don't consider them sacred by any means.

AN ALBUM IS MADE OF A COLLECTION OF SONGS
SONGS VARY IN QUALITY AND SOME ARE VERY GOOD WHILST SOME VERY BAD
WHILE LISTENING TO AN ALBUM IS COOL SOMETIMES A SONG IS STUCK IN MY HEAD OR I WANT TO LISTEN TO IT WITHOUT LISTENING TO 4800 MINUTES OF OTHER SONGS THAT I HAVE NO DESIRE TO LISTEN TO AT THAT PRECISE MOMENT
FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER I MAY WANT TO LISTEN TO A SPECIFIC SONG OR A WHOLE ALBUM

HOWEVER WHEN FIRST APPROACHING AN ARTIST IT IS BEST TO LISTEN TO ONE OF THEIR ALBUMS ALL THE WAY THROUGH* TO GAIN FAMILIARITY WITH IT BUT AFTER THAT YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH IT

*UNLESS THE FIRST FEW TRACKS ARE GARBAGE THEN YOU CAN PROBABLY TOSS IT AND RANT ABOUT YOUR INCOMPARABLE HATRED OF ARTISTNAME - ALBUMNAMEhttp://imgur.com/r3L1T.png

That's not true. Composers in the 17th century wrote song cycles, or collections of smaller works meant to be appreciated as a whole. (aka, Album)

I'm speaking of terms of contemporary music within the rock/pop/soul/jazz paradigm created with the intention of recording a full length album. An orchestral suite or a song cycle is not the same thing as a concept album.

That fact that composers prior to 1960 and dating back further than the 17th century created lengthy compositional works that were conceptually based and meant to be appreciated as a whole has not escaped me, but I thank you for your concern.

Is there a reason why you've decided to shout this?