It appears that most of the “What are you listening to now?” posts are of single songs play from the internet. With Spotify and other services serving up singles, this would be the way to enjoy music via your PC.
I have ripped many of my CDs to the flac lossless format for mobile listening.
When I am at home, I listen to a CD on my nice stereo system, but these days having a stereo in the home/apt seems to be out of fashion. It is natural to “skip a step” and just plug a headset or speakers into the PC if you are not interested in hifi audio in the room. In an apartment with roomates it can be much simpler to have your own private listening experience, and it is much cheaper than the alternative. You can even get great sound with a DAC and headphones.
Listening to an album requires a time commitment even if it is background music.
The last album I purchased/listened to was in the late 1990s. Maybe 1998. About twenty-three years ago. I saw no point buying albums when only two or three tracks were decent and the rest were rubbish. I doubt that ratio has changed.
As one gets older and free time becomes more limited/valuable, wasting that time listening to ‘filler’ tracks on albums makes less sense. So do massive music collections. Better to just buy the tracks you really like and forget that the rest even exist. When you die of old age your entire music collection will likely number less than a thousand tracks.
I love to listen to albums still. It’s almost exclusively how I listen to music. Albums feel like a complete peice of artwork, singles just don’t capture the heart and soul of music or the artist to me. We don’t subscribe to any music services. I only purchase CDs and rip them otherwise you don’t own it. Host subsonic/airsonic server for library management on phones and computers. Primarily listen to music on my long comute and have thousands invested in aftermarket mobile audio to make it the best experience possible.
My wife and I have a growing vinyl collection. I appreciate the look, feel, and sometimes the sound. For one I need to get a better record player, two it is frustrating sometimes when a record isn’t a good press and you spend $20 on it.
As bad as Spotify is for sound quality at least it is consistent.
I generally listen to entire albums but I also have a few playlists of my favorites.
If there’s an artist or band that publishes a new album I usually listen to it from the first track to the last in order.
I also do force myself a bit sometimes because I feel the instinct to skip a track because it’s not getting me vibe to it from the first minute but I resiste the urge to try to understand it fully before starting to skip it.
I don’t usually do it through CDs anymore thanks (?) to the music being on the internet and it’s usually decent enough quality to undestand most of the nuances of it. We’re past the era of 64 or 128KB/s mp3s if you’re listening to digital music.
Also don’t think I’ll ever switch to listening from speakers because I like being able to keep a precise level of volume that doesen’t bother me (I’m really sensitive to high sound pressure) but allows me to pick up all the details in music. I’d need an anechoic chamber to appreciate speakers for sure hahaha
I like today’s possibilities of listing to a vast amount of music and discover nieces that otherwise I might have missed + talking to friends via chat or IRL.
I do have a Vinyl player at home and recently bought The Algorithm – Compiler Optimization Techniques album to be able to listen to it in the living room, no computer attached, sipping on a glass of tea
Automobiles are often the way we hear our music since we are a automobile nation in most of the US and many places else. For periods of time, it was my main way of listening - CDs or USB drive with flac. I have burned albums and ‘mix tapes’ for my travels.
The interesting thing about listening in cars is that you hear different bands of frequencies than in a house. Several times I have heard new things in a track because I was in a car. Listening and hearing are largely in the mind - we can imagine, focus on something specific, get spatial information, etc. I a room these factors are often different than in a car.
But a car can be a wonderful place to listen to music. Often you can’t turn the volume up enough to mask out all extraneous noise like sirens and horns and revving engines but it can be comfortable with decent speakers, and you are often less distracted on the road.
I had a six CD changer and then the USB Aux in a couple of cars.
As a pseudo-audiophile, I have searched for the best quality albums, both in audio recording and mastering quality. My first album was Sgt Peppers in the 70s, long before I was aware of what HiFi really was. It was pretty good quality for the times, but the content was what blew rock lovers away.
One example of my favorites is Famous Blue Raincoat where Jennifer Warnes, one of the best female vocalists ever, sings the songs of Leonard Cohen with no-holds-barred studio musicians and engineering. Its is kind of dark and kind of amazing. It will test your stereo system for you. It is not compressed like so much modern music. And I had never heard of this album before or even knew who Jennifer Warnes was. I had heard of Stevie Ray Vaughn who plays on the first track, which begins “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom…”.
My listening habits also are influenced by the fact that I have a fairly high-end CD player with tube output for each channel. It thankfully has a remote control, but I have to stand up to change the CD and adjust the volume.
I try to rip all my favorite CDs, still a work in progress and I can make mix CDs for any system or listen on my computers if I want.
I feel this is related to this thread. Honestly I think it is a bad thing they would shuffle by default when playing albums. Now I don’t use Spotify anymore but I’m happy for the users.
