How many times do you anticipate playing an album? And do you buy albums for any other reason than you'll play it lots?

Question prompted by thinking "I should probably buy that" about the new Herbert album.

Have occasionally bought albums - eg. quirky things on Trunk - that I've thought my life would be better for hearing but knowing in advance that I wouldn't play loads and loads (as opposed to buying an album and finding it to be rubbish).

(Sorry, the grammar in that title is appalling).

Some things I know I'm not going to listen to a huge amount of times, because they're awkward, prickly, difficult to consume or whatever, but they're such a big kick that even rare exposure is definitely worth it. Other stuff I buy thinking "I'll get round to this at some point" and then maybe... don't... for whatever reason. But if I buy something wanting to play it lots, and end up not, for whatever reason (the new Phoenix being a case in point) then that makes me feel pretty pissed off.

I require any new purchase be played twice before I place it on my racks. After that, it's hard to say. Some albums are bought to fill in a gap in an artist's catalog, some compilations are bought for just a few tracks, some albums are challenging things as Nick described. Disappointing albums will be sold within a couple of years. But the truth is that I have thousands of albums, access to even more music and a love of new discoveries. Doubtless I own many albums that I'll only listen to 5 times as well as a small subset of albums that I'll play a hundred times.

i listen to most of the stuff i buy right away, but still, i buy more than i listen to and there are tons of records on my shelf i never listened to. i am worse with books though. i buy way more than i read. there is something satisfying just in the fact of ownership though, for me, with both books and records. it's a waste of money.

I don't really anticipate listening to ANY album any more than once, in all honesty... sometimes an album will have "something" about it which makes me carry on listening to it for a while, and other times it kinda gets filed away mentally until it swims and surfaces in my mind and makes me go "hang on, I must listen to that!". But really, I just let my feelings dictate what I listen to... if an album only gets listened to once and forgotten about, I don't fret... because there's always another album that might be on that I'll get a lot of pleasure out of for many weeks/months/years to come.

I buy a fair amount of 'difficult' music that isn't really suitable for constantly repeating plays. But I'm sure there are some poppier records on my shelves that haven't had that many spins, too. I kind of miss having a tiny collection and knowing it all intimately, but I do still get mini-obsessions in the midst of the larger, broader interest.

I assume/hope I'm going to listen to a record multiple times, ideally until I get tired of it. Sometimes I'll listen to it as part of a rotation of records I acquired around the same time; sometimes I'll just listen to the one record over and over. If it only gets one listen, it's because it was a struggle to get through, and my hope of finding something redeeming within the crapulence was all that kept me listening.

In the pre-Spotify/downloading era I'd buy anything I wanted to hear at least once, whereas nowadays I'll only really shell out for albums I really like and think I'll end up playing several times - although it's obviously difficult to know which ones I'll get bored of quickly and which will end up as the set-in-stone favourites I dig out every year or two.

As for the second question, I think the only exception would be boxed sets where it's more of a case of slowly working my way through the music (and the liner notes) over a long period of time. I used to do the completist/collector thing with my favourite bands but I don't really care about that anymore.

Well, since everything is streaming in advance these days, there has been several albums where I've been obsessively listening to them for days, and then when I finally get a bought copy, I've kind of gotten over it. Which I really don't mind.

I don't think I ever paid for anything I thought I'd only want to hear once. Though I have bought many albums I've thought I ought to own...

My general pattern now is that I will look for a preview of an album before I buy it, usually on Spotify, unless it's a release by a band/artist on the Eternal Favorites list (which is probably like 50 artists at this point). If I haven't wanted to play it twice on Spotify, I won't buy it. Once I buy, it goes onto my phone and is in heavy rotation for the first two weeks, by which point I've usually identified the 3-5 songs I will be playing to death on various self-made and machine-generated playlists.

I basically pay for all my music, so I try and listen to every record I buy at least 3-4 times, always planning to return to it later if it doesn't become part of regular rotation after that. I've always been the kind of listener who would rather get to know intimately a smaller number of things than listen to a million things just once. That doesn't stop me from spending almost all my spare income on music, though. Damn.

I buy a fair amount of 'difficult' music that isn't really suitable for constantly repeating plays.

I sometimes find it really frustrating when people say "How often do you play [record X]?" as if it's ultimate measure of quality, for me some music is great because of its initial impact, or because it's experimental in nature and it's just interesting to hear how it plays out.

Er, that should be "as if it's the ultimate measure" of course.

Yeah, but if record makes a decent 'initial impact' on you, you're likely to play it again. It's the ones which don't make an impact at all that never get re-listened to.

Well, since everything is streaming in advance these days, there has been several albums where I've been obsessively listening to them for days, and then when I finally get a bought copy, I've kind of gotten over it. Which I really don't mind.

― Frederik B, Thursday, May 9, 2013 3:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, yeah, I've had this a few times. Heard it pre-release via mp3, played it LOADS and then by the time I buy the vinyl, I've worked through that first-love compulsion to hear it over and over again. These sorts of records sometimes turn into old standbys, though, where you might not be playing it lots in the first few months/year of ownership, but they'll sneak back into rotation on a semi-regular basis.

Yeah, but if record makes a decent 'initial impact' on you, you're likely to play it again. It's the ones which don't make an impact at all that never get re-listened to.

Well that's not strictly true; thanks to the magic of the Genius playlist I have gone back to several albums and relistened to them because a song from it pulled out of context suddenly became fantastic and that has sometimes been a gateway for me back into the album. (Granted it doesn't happen all the time; I still have no desire to play In Rainbows even though I really like several songs on it, for example.)

I will also buy novelty items, picture discs, shaped vinyl etc on a punt, where maybe I won't listen to it that much, but I like the artefact itself enough to buy it for that reason. Though more often I'll get stuff like that with the values of both music-I-like and interesting-as-artefact working in tandem.

Yeah, but if record makes a decent 'initial impact' on you, you're likely to play it again.

In most cases, absolutely but there are exceptions - records that shock or unsettle and stay with you without you feeling the need to revisit them, or are in some way overwhelming. A while back I listened to Prince Paul's A Prince Among Thieves, which really impressed me and which I really enjoyed but it is something of an epic - I don't know if I'd enjoy it as much second time around but that first listen was so engrossing it almost doesn't matter.

records that shock or unsettle and stay with you without you feeling the need to revisit them, or are in some way overwhelming

david axelrods 'requiem' album is like this.
i'm an axelrod fan .. and had avoided getting this one, but eventually curiosity overcame me, so i bought it.
and damn, its a heavy listen, and so will never listen to it again, but i'm very glad its in the pile.

There are probably multiple parts to pondering the question including cultural expectations - I'm thinking of films in comparison with albums: it wouldn't be unusual to only watch a film once, however good it was; i think a night in with a dvd is regarded as very different to a night in with a cd. I'm probably also thinking about "reward" for the artist: I'm glad, say, Herbert is making albums from 10 second explosion samples. And on a tangent from "reward", maybe a kinder of broader "acknowledgement" - that idea of being glad a record is in the pile despite the knowledge that you'll never play it again. The Trunk record mentioned at the beginning was an album of train announcements (I have to admit, I've never actually got round to playing it). Not at my most coherent today ...

I anticipate more than a few once I buy something. if after a couple years I haven't listened to it more than a handful of times then out it goes. the vast majority of stuff I own I feel like I have listened to hundreds of times, there are things I cycle through over and over

Research study. Might be of interest:

https://docs.google.com/a/brookes.ac.uk/forms/d/1HCrZF3cp2MsqC4Fah_qqTNSHhXRZxco8LhkfCM2XCR4/viewform?pli=1