3 ms·

When you pay a streaming service, you get access to full albums, and thus can listen to them, beginning to end if you like. I often do...

ghaff 9y ago
You can but I'd be willing to wager that's the (vast) minority approach. I'll deliberately listen to an album now and then but the vast majority of the time it's some sort of playlist, even if it's a playlist from a single artist.
- marpstar 9y ago
  I'm not sure it's much different than in the 1990s and people buying singles of their favorite songs instead of the full album. I may even go as far as to say that more people have access to the full albums today than ever before.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    90s I'm not so sure. I was probably mostly buying CDs then--at least before Napster, etc. in the late 90s. I was thinking about more the pre-digital download eras when albums were the default through long play vinyl, CDs, and cassettes. I agree that initial per song digital downloads definitely favored buying individual hits even given some discounts for buying entire albums.
  - trentmb 9y ago
    There were tons of 'Various Artists' compilations too.
- bigiain 9y ago
  To be fair, I don't see heaps of albums lately that're composed/curated into specific orders of their songs - which might not be true, it might just reflect that I used to listen to a lot more of "that sort of music". You don't just listen to a single Pink Floyd song in isolation - or you can, but you'll miss out on it's context which might be fine for Great Gig In The Sky, but many of their songs loose heaps of the "art" in isolation. Same with Yes, old (Peter Gabriel) Genesis, King Crimson, Rush even some less "prog rock" groups like Supertramp and Queen had albums that mostly told stories - Meatloaf as the canonical classic example I guess. I think the only thing I've listened to recently that had an "obvious order required to "get it" is Petrified Forest by Biosphere. I don't hear or notice artists doing that so much these days. I kinda feel like "an album" is gonna end up a strange relic of the '70s through maybe the 90s from a future music historian point of view...
jv22222 9y ago
Yeah, but you don't queue up at the store to buy it and then sit on the bus ride home checking it out excited to get home and loose yourself in the music...

ghaff 9y ago

You can but I'd be willing to wager that's the (vast) minority approach. I'll deliberately listen to an album now and then but the vast majority of the time it's some sort of playlist, even if it's a playlist from a single artist.

marpstar 9y ago
I'm not sure it's much different than in the 1990s and people buying singles of their favorite songs instead of the full album. I may even go as far as to say that more people have access to the full albums today than ever before.
- ghaff 9y ago
  90s I'm not so sure. I was probably mostly buying CDs then--at least before Napster, etc. in the late 90s. I was thinking about more the pre-digital download eras when albums were the default through long play vinyl, CDs, and cassettes. I agree that initial per song digital downloads definitely favored buying individual hits even given some discounts for buying entire albums.
- trentmb 9y ago
  There were tons of 'Various Artists' compilations too.
bigiain 9y ago
To be fair, I don't see heaps of albums lately that're composed/curated into specific orders of their songs - which might not be true, it might just reflect that I used to listen to a lot more of "that sort of music". You don't just listen to a single Pink Floyd song in isolation - or you can, but you'll miss out on it's context which might be fine for Great Gig In The Sky, but many of their songs loose heaps of the "art" in isolation. Same with Yes, old (Peter Gabriel) Genesis, King Crimson, Rush even some less "prog rock" groups like Supertramp and Queen had albums that mostly told stories - Meatloaf as the canonical classic example I guess. I think the only thing I've listened to recently that had an "obvious order required to "get it" is Petrified Forest by Biosphere. I don't hear or notice artists doing that so much these days. I kinda feel like "an album" is gonna end up a strange relic of the '70s through maybe the 90s from a future music historian point of view...

jv22222 9y ago

Yeah, but you don't queue up at the store to buy it and then sit on the bus ride home checking it out excited to get home and loose yourself in the music...