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It has been a tradition for a long time for LPs to be played in order. That's why B-sides exist. Some of the greatest bands of the past carefully constructed t

It has been a tradition for a long time for LPs to be played in order. That's why B-sides exist. Some of the greatest bands of the past carefully constructed their LPs to tell a story. Pretty much every Pink Floyd album is meant to be listened to in order. The cuts are so seamless you might not even notice the track changing. I used to download singles and I never really understood non-pop music. Once I started listening to albums as a whole, I had a new appreciation for older bands. The art of making an LP is somewhat lost now with the rise of singles. But some artists, like Perturbator or pretty much anyone signed to BloodMusic, still produce LPs and even sell vinyl. I know it may sound exaggerated, but I promise anyone who has never listened to their favorite rock and roll artists albums from start to finish, do it. You will have a newfound respect for the narrative rather than just thinking the band made good singles. Some singles might appear kind of meh in isolation but in the context of an LP, fit right in. I honestly wish some of these streaming services had a way to turn on album radio rather than single radio. Single radio is such a destructive thing for so much of music crafted in the way I described above. Artists or users should be able to designate whether an album is a whole or a collection of singles. Then the steaming services should have some modes to interface with this flag. Otherwise, the music is just being consumed in a way it wasn't really intended. This is also why actual radio doesn't do some artists the justice they deserve. Pink Floyd singles are good but their LPs are 100x better, even the songs people consider to not be hits, they make more sense and don't stand out as bad. I could talk for days about how "this one trick" changed my entire perspective on music. Perhaps I'll just make a YouTube video about it and title it "Streaming services are destroying Music!"

smoe 5y ago
I agree, that listening to a well crafted, thought out album is a great experience and something I very much enjoy. But on the other hand, given just how much society has devalued recorded music, these days, I don't think it makes much sense for artist to produce complete albums unless they already have a very well established name and are well funded. Producing say a hour of coherent music to be played in order is significantly more effort and cost than "just" producing the equivalent length in independent songs. Also with albums you have longer periods where you don't have much to publish to gain attention vs continuous releases. I was active semi professionally in music and we self released 3 LPs and 4 EPs. I don't think I would ever do an LP again without essentially being in a position where I don't really rely on whether it makes money or not, and have the luxury to be able to care about artistic vision alone.
Hamuko 5y ago
For every The Wall, there's probably a thousand albums where the order doesn't matter at all. I usually listen to albums from start to finish on the first go and then just consume them in random library shuffle without worrying about it.
jacquesm 5y ago
B sides exist as an artifact of the medium vinyl. CDs do not have 'B' sides, neither did 8 tracks (but that was by design). Reel-to-reel tape (never really used for mass music distribution) and it's smaller cousin, the compact cassette (which was) can be used both in multi-track one-way mode and back-and-forth mode, but you can't really switch around reel-to-reel tape without risk of damage so there you'll always need a reversing deck if you want to be able to do that mid-reel, cassettes can be popped out and flipped or you can have a reversing deck (either one with multiple heads or a head that flips). Compact cassettes mimicked the 'A' and 'B' side format of the LP close enough that lots of labels issued them, usually aimed at people playing them in vehicles (much like 8 tracks) where for obvious reasons a record player wasn't an option. One interesting bit is that on an LP it doesn't matter if both sides are exactly equally long, but for a tape it does otherwise you end up with a chunk of blank tape on the shorter side. If it's just a few seconds nobody will notice but if it gets longer it can be quite noticeable, especially on an auto-reverse deck. Some labels would fudge this by editing the length of the tracks or by accelerating or decelerating fade-outs, or by tweaking the inter-song gap.

smoe 5y ago

I agree, that listening to a well crafted, thought out album is a great experience and something I very much enjoy. But on the other hand, given just how much society has devalued recorded music, these days, I don't think it makes much sense for artist to produce complete albums unless they already have a very well established name and are well funded. Producing say a hour of coherent music to be played in order is significantly more effort and cost than "just" producing the equivalent length in independent songs. Also with albums you have longer periods where you don't have much to publish to gain attention vs continuous releases. I was active semi professionally in music and we self released 3 LPs and 4 EPs. I don't think I would ever do an LP again without essentially being in a position where I don't really rely on whether it makes money or not, and have the luxury to be able to care about artistic vision alone.

Hamuko 5y ago

For every The Wall, there's probably a thousand albums where the order doesn't matter at all. I usually listen to albums from start to finish on the first go and then just consume them in random library shuffle without worrying about it.

jacquesm 5y ago

B sides exist as an artifact of the medium vinyl. CDs do not have 'B' sides, neither did 8 tracks (but that was by design). Reel-to-reel tape (never really used for mass music distribution) and it's smaller cousin, the compact cassette (which was) can be used both in multi-track one-way mode and back-and-forth mode, but you can't really switch around reel-to-reel tape without risk of damage so there you'll always need a reversing deck if you want to be able to do that mid-reel, cassettes can be popped out and flipped or you can have a reversing deck (either one with multiple heads or a head that flips). Compact cassettes mimicked the 'A' and 'B' side format of the LP close enough that lots of labels issued them, usually aimed at people playing them in vehicles (much like 8 tracks) where for obvious reasons a record player wasn't an option. One interesting bit is that on an LP it doesn't matter if both sides are exactly equally long, but for a tape it does otherwise you end up with a chunk of blank tape on the shorter side. If it's just a few seconds nobody will notice but if it gets longer it can be quite noticeable, especially on an auto-reverse deck. Some labels would fudge this by editing the length of the tracks or by accelerating or decelerating fade-outs, or by tweaking the inter-song gap.