CROSS BURGESON'S BLOG

Does Anybody Listen to Whole Albums Still? (Do You Use Spotify for It?)

The last time I intentionally listened to an album all the way through was probably a week ago. I do this a lot because I think it’s fun, but I know among most people they just don’t do that. and it seems like people do it even less in the age of digital streaming.

Since I started writing these blog posts, which have mostly been about whole albums, I’ve kind of been wondering “do people really still sit down and listen to albums?” yes, actual album sales have been going down (for like, ever) but what I mean is, when I decide to listen to music I’m usually not listening to a whole album, and I think it’s the same for my friends. But why is this the case? I think it’s simple. I think it’s the algorithm and ease of use.

I mean, we’ve had the ability to skip tracks on albums for a long time before we had Spotify. But did we use it as much? I don’t think we did. It’s a lot easier now to listen to just listen to ‘music’ as a monolith whereas I think a while back, you didn’t listen to ‘music’ you listened to Somebody’s music. There’s a difference there. And I think it’s the lack of human choice involved in the process. Now, you put on something you want to listen to and the Spotify algorithm will choose what to play for you next. You used to have to consciously decide what to play next but you don’t now.

I actually don’t think the above is an issue. But it does have an interesting consequence. I mean of course if you have the chance to only listen to your favorite songs on an album, without having to buy the album, you’re going to do that. but what I wonder about is if this has killed “the album as an experience” It seems to me that for a lot of new music being put out there, the product isn’t the whole album, it’s 3 songs from the album. And if that’s not what an artist is trying to do, they get punished for it. The algorithm doesn’t play albums, it plays songs.

Off of the top of my head I think of two artist who seem to hurt my thesis. those are Zach Bryan and Taylor Swift, both artists who very much make albums as opposed to songs and are still wildly popular despite the modern subscription based form of music being tailored towards serving you individual songs instead of whole albums but still. I have to wonder, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here may still exist if it had been conceived of in the age of Spotify, but would anyone have listened to it?

I actually am seriously interested in how common it is for people to just sit down and listen to an album all the way through (and if that changes based on how recently the album was released). So let me know in the comments if you’ve never done that or when the last time you did it was. I think I might end up being surprised.

In

4 responses

  1. Clara Yeaman Avatar
    Clara Yeaman

    Your post is really interesting. I’ve thought about what it’s like to listen to albums vs. songs some myself and I think in my experience, my level of curiosity about the artist’s vision determines how I connect with the music. Sure, I add my favorite songs to playlists, but I definitely still love sitting down with an album and really sinking into an artist’s vision as long as I connect with the artist or that vision in some way. The last year I’ve had several whole albums on repeat, including Hozier’s Unreal Unearth, Mitski’s This Land is Inhospitibal…, The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstacy, GigI Perez’s How to catch a falling knife, Noah Kahn’s Stick Season, Big Theif’s Masterpiece and Dragon New Warm Mountian…, Raidiohead’s In Rainbow, and I’m looking forward to listening to Lady Gaga’s Mayhem now that it’s out and relistening to Destroy Boy’s Crybaby.

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  2. Wyatt Haas Avatar
    Wyatt Haas

    This is something that I think about a lot. I completely agree with everything you are saying here. There are so many things that have been lost with the rise of streaming, and it is a sad sight to see. Album sequencing, album themes, if it is a double album or a mixtape or an ep. All of these are lost due to the playlistification of music. In my opinion, you are doing the musical artist a great disservice by listening to a song on an album rather than listening to the full album beforehand. Fully appreciating an artist’s music and message requires me to step away from playlists such as “This Is ___” and into the albums they are known for.

    I cancelled my spotify premium student plan and instead bought an iPod and recommend you to get one because they are so cheap. This allows me to remove all external factors such as nofitications and phone calls when I listen to my music so I can fully digest it and appreciate what is happening. There are no playlists on an iPod. You HAVE to listen to full albums or manually create a playlist. Not only that but the audio quality you gain from playing from a ripped CD or vinyl is absolutely worth the investment for me, which you know all about audio quality because you talked about this in one of your other blogs. There are so many examples of finding new things in my favorite songs that I have never noticed before simply because of the audio quality. The most popular example I have of this on my iPod is In Rainbows. It is just immensely better than streaming it on Spotify. The best example I have is I always thought that the intro to Weird Fishes/Arpeggi was a bass guitar glissando down by Colin Greenwood, but it’s actually Thom Yorke vocalising. I didn’t mean for this to be so long, but it is something I’m really passionate about so I could talk about it forever.

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  3. Katelyn Hostetter Allee Avatar
    Katelyn Hostetter Allee

    To be honest, I don’t think I even learned what an album was until high school. When I listened to music, it came from the radio (which just plays song) or from CD tracks I had when I was younger (which consisted mostly of Kids Bop). So, no, I don’t listen to albums and you can take me as an extreme example of how albums have become “irrelevant”.

    You bring up an interesting point about how the algorithm decides what you listen to, not you. That’s one of those things I’ve always thought about but never put into words. I normally use YouTube and I’ve found most of my favorite songs through the generated playlists it gives me and it’s pretty rare when I decide to actually follow the musician or even check who the creator is. It’s kinda sad, to be honest. The musician gets no credit from me. I should start checking out the musicians more often.

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  4. Prof L Avatar
    Prof L

    Thinking about the Gutenberg Parenthesis, it occurs to me that we’ve definitely moved outside the Album Parenthesis. Popular music existed before the album was a significant art form, and it still exists–but I wonder–it seems like maybe the Album Era overlapped with the time when popular music was the most important for the most people…..(how could you PROVE a thesis like that, though?)

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