Rediscovering the experience of listening to an entire LP

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After six months of listening to music on continuous shuffle following the purchase of an MP3 player, this week I started playing Lps through from beginning to end. It's quite a difference. Instead of my mood being set by whatever song pops up, I'm setting the music to my mood for a sustained period. I feel less szhico already.

― shookout (shookout), Saturday, 19 February 2005 00:19 (twenty years ago)

yay!! i approve of listening to albums.

― Ian John50n (orion), Saturday, 19 February 2005 00:23 (twenty years ago)

Overdoing shuffle fever certainly helps one appreciate a good album.

― Alba (Alba), Saturday, 19 February 2005 00:41 (twenty years ago)

What I don't understand about the singles/shuffle approach to listening is: when you're in the mood for a certain type of music, don't you want to hear a whole bunch of it? When you hear a great song that hits the spot, don't you want more? Hell, I usually listen to several albums by the same artist in a row. I guess I'm just shuffling on a more macro level.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 19 February 2005 01:01 (twenty years ago)

I usually get a big stack of records out and play one side of each. That way I can hear more stuff. It's kinda like having an ipod it's just a lot heavier.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 19 February 2005 01:28 (twenty years ago)

People used to refer to playing records as playing "sides."

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 19 February 2005 01:43 (twenty years ago)

That's true, I guess listening to records promotes "shuffling" more than listening to CDs does. When you have to get up to turn the record over you may as well put something else on. This usually depends on how good the last track on side A is though.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 19 February 2005 01:47 (twenty years ago)

I go through these sorts of phases a lot ... a vinyl phase, followed by a "load up Winamp with ten hours of music by twenty different artists and listen on shuffle play" phase, followed by a 5CD changer phase ... it keeps things fresh.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Saturday, 19 February 2005 02:04 (twenty years ago)

I've just entered a phase of random MP3 listening(!), and this thread has me readying a bunch of albums. Overall, I go for album listening, but yeah, mixing things up keeps me happy.

― PiersT, Saturday, 19 February 2005 02:10 (twenty years ago)

Shuffle fever is a great term.

I'm sure I'll be back. Shuffle's great for the times you can't decide what you want to listen to.

― shookout (shookout), Saturday, 19 February 2005 02:25 (twenty years ago)

I totally don't understand shuffle. I'm all about hearing "sides" if not whole albums.

― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Saturday, 19 February 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

Don't you ever have times when you stare at all your albums and none of them jump out at you?

Also, you never know what'll come up from thousands and thousands of songs, leading to odd juxtopositions, surprises, and rediscoveries.

― shookout (shookout), Saturday, 19 February 2005 04:12 (twenty years ago)

Other than downloading some unsigned artists and getting a rare few odd rare things back in the napster days, I never got into the whole mp3 phenomenon. That being said, after checking out a friends IPod I am getting curious about it all.

I'm starting to get the itch to set up a music server with all of my cd's on one PC with line outs to some decent powered studio speakers and getting an IPod for mobile use. A few questions, how do you organize all of these files so it isn't just a jumble? What kind of compression settings make for a good sound? How many gigs of harddrive space do you think it would take to get about 1500 CDs with room to grow on one PC?

― Earl Nash (earlnash), Saturday, 19 February 2005 05:19 (twenty years ago)

I agree with all that - and I wish to appropriate the phrase, 'I'm just shuffling on a more macro level' for when people ask me why I'm walking funny.

― thee music mole, Sunday, 20 February 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

I still mostly listen to albums as such. I suppose that cranky idiot Pfork piece about iPods being Kubrickian abysses was the rockist approach to the modern day. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 February 2005 20:59 (twenty years ago)

I have to listen to albums all the way through. I don't know why. I love making mix tapes for other people, but I never listen to ones other people make for me, or 'Greatest Hits' or compilations. I can listen to singles, of course, but only if I own the single. Sometimes I'll make a playlist of, say, all the Replacements albums and listen to that on shuffle. That's pretty fun, actually.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Sunday, 20 February 2005 21:20 (twenty years ago)

Let's try it out. Everyone go listen to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway all the way through right now.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Sunday, 20 February 2005 22:06 (twenty years ago)

You do "Lamb."

I'm doin' "Here, My Dear,"
and "Watertown."

Although I wouldn't mind hearing that Genesis tune "It" if "It" came at the FIRST of the ab-lum, ha ha...

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Sunday, 20 February 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

I got my 'Pod in October, and after a long bout with shuffle fever, I too am rediscovering albums again. I started to feel like each song was losing its meaning by being decontextualized and by becoming the equivalent of any other song. I found myself paying less attention to each song, and also, surprisingly, getting bored more quickly and easily. I'd just skip through more and more songs, or I'd be excited to hear a song at the beginning and then not even make it to the end.

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 21 February 2005 03:07 (twenty years ago)

Sometimes I feel like listening to albums is just researching what songs would make for good shuffles and mixes. That's when I have album fever. I prefer album fever to shuffle fever though.

― johnny on the spot, Monday, 21 February 2005 03:13 (twenty years ago)

I have friends, and a husband come to think of it, who cannot stand to listen to a whole album all the way through, at least while I'm around.
They'll start in the middle, skip back to the start, play a couple of tracks in sequence then ditch the album. Drives me batty. They say they get bored by the same thing...but I kind of get in a groove, and want to see it through. Not that I'm a purist and ONLY listen to whole albums..I get shuffle fever a bit, and I love my mixtapes to death...but as far as album listening goes, I hate continual farting around. Y'know?

― VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 21 February 2005 03:18 (twenty years ago)

i can scarcely make it through an entire track let alone an album these days.

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Monday, 21 February 2005 03:28 (twenty years ago)

I have never been a shuffler

and usually fall asleep in any attempt to listen to a whole album (but then again I do most of my listening in bed because it's so fucking cold, and I can never get enough sleep)

I "continually fart around," I suppose. So much to listen to so little time, why not the artists/a computer pick what you're going to hear

― Sonny, Ah!!1 (Sonny A.), Monday, 21 February 2005 04:07 (twenty years ago)

and what do you shuffle people do when you get a new album, btw? do you just skim it and listen later when it comes on random?

― Sonny, Ah!!1 (Sonny A.), Monday, 21 February 2005 04:08 (twenty years ago)

Even if I'm in the midst of a shuffle phase, I never listen to an album for the first time on shuffle.

Sometimes this means I have to get through the shuffle phase first, and thus a new album will remain unheard until I'm in the mood to hear full albums again.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Monday, 21 February 2005 04:15 (twenty years ago)

A few questions, how do you organize all of these files so it isn't just a jumble?

As long as you tag your files properly (it sounds like you'd be using your CDs to get the mp3s so this can be done pretty automatically) then iTunes will organise them all beautifully for you in its library. The underlying file structure is neat enough, but you don't have to actually look at it in day to day use.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 21 February 2005 11:54 (twenty years ago)

I almost exclusively use shuffle when I'm on the train. My commute is about the right length to be able to listen to a whole album but I'm rarely in the right state of mind for it. So I have loads of different playlists for travel designed to be shuffled. (I am an iTunes playlist junkie).

When I'm at home, however, I'd much rather listen to an album the whole way through. I usually have 3 CDs in my system for around a week and I listen to them all the way through.
At the minute I've got Low - Secret Name, New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies, and Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat on the go at the minute. Mind you the Low CD's been in for about three weeks now...

― Greig (treefell), Monday, 21 February 2005 12:12 (twenty years ago)

You can set iTunes to shuffle by albums instead of tracks...

― Un investigador del siglo XXI (AaronHz), Monday, 21 February 2005 12:24 (twenty years ago)

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