Change in how we listen.

I'm pretty good about listening to an album as a whole, but I grew up with albums and tapes. From what I can tell with the newer albums I'm listening too, artists are still pacing albums carefully.

As for singles, a lot of the new stuff I'm listening to doesn't have singles, so yes, there are some GREAT songs. If you're letting pop radio/video channels predigest your music for you, you're missing out big time.

Vince524 said:

No I agree, but do they arrange the differently? If you were the person in charge of arraging the songs on a new release, would you put the songs on Van Halen's 1984 in the same order? Hot for Teacher is a great opener to the 2nd side, but now there aren't any 2nd sides.

Also, I do listen to entire albums, but I wonder if more kids these days don't. Or if a song doesn't grab them right away, they don't give it a shot.

I try to when I get an entire album, but do you think it's changed for younger ppl?

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I guess it depends on how you define younger. My 14 year old listens to singles - I was listening to whole albums when I was much younger than she is. OTOH, the music aficionados I know in their late 20s and early 30s do listen to whole albums and discuss the openers, closers, etc.

I've always listened to whole albums, whether I liked the CD I had bought or not. Perhaps it is optimism - if I don't like the first 4 songs, maybe the next one will be better?

But I grew up with CDs, pretty much. I'm old enough to remember tapes, but I had only 3 or 4 tapes in my collection, because at that point I wasn't into music very much.

I don't think I've ever listened to a record, actually... Just CDs, tapes, and live DVDs, and sometimes radio.

And yes - I agree that you will find hidden gems on any CD that were never going to be a single.

Oh, and I forgot to add that I don't understand how people can buy single tracks from iTunes - for me, if I like one song by that band, I want to have the entire CD's worth of songs.

ETA: And my sister, who is older than me, sometimes buys single songs from iTunes, so I don't think it's necessarily an age thing.

ETA2: As per the artist choosing what song goes where... I think that's the easiest part about putting a CD together, actually. A band would be foolish to not have a good think about which order their songs will go in. It can have a great effect, and basically it's a lot easier than actually creating the music. I mean, once you have a dozen or so songs already recorded and mastered and everything, it shouldn't be that difficult to optimise (to some degree, anyway) which order they will appear on the CD.

I unearthed a pretty awesome old album (Moody Blues, Threshold of Dream) which my sister had when I was a tot, and which I loved, because I was a weird tot.

Anyway, I put this thing on my iPhone, which is new, and the iPhone kept shuffling it no matter what I did to try to get it to play in sequence. Albums should never be shuffled, especially not a concept album where one song flows into another. Blasphemy.

I got a friend to help me fix the shuffle issue, so I'm okay now. But you should have seen me this morning. Flipping homicidal.

I albums.

I usually have my iPod on shuffle, but every once in a while a song comes on and I go, "Wow, that whole album is cool" and I'll switch it to that album and listen all the way through.

Some albums you have to listen to from start to finish, like "Dark Side of the Moon." It's a total experience.

I still have a turntable and I still put albums on to listen to. I think for sound quality, vinyl on a decent stereo is far superior to the compressed digital of MP3s.

I grew up listening to whole albums that often when I hear a song on the radio or where-ever and it ends, I'll start humming the song that comes next in sequence.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Some albums you have to listen to from start to finish, like "Dark Side of the Moon." It's a total experience.

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This is true of most Floyd albums.

Shadow_Ferret said:

I still have a turntable and I still put albums on to listen to. I think for sound quality, vinyl on a decent stereo is far superior to the compressed digital of MP3s.

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Me too. Fortunately some of the better newer bands feel the same way and put their stuff out on heavy vinyl. I have all of My Morning Jacket's studio albums on vinyl, for example.

Yes, there's been a minor resurgence of vinyl releases.

The other great thing about vinyl that no one mentioned is the art. Album cover art was often beautiful, or thoughtful, or esoteric, or whatever, but it was rarely ignored.

Now with these little postage stamp icons on MP3s, it's like "What's the point?"

I blame CD's for how people listen to music now.

Regardless of whether or not you preferred analog to digital and vinyl to compact discs, one thing that changed drastically was time. Records could play 40 to 60 minutes max worth of music. Look at most of your pop and rock and soul records and they clock out at around 30 to 45 minutes.

Take Vince524's example of Van Halen's 1984, the last full album with Diamond David Lee Roth up front. It clocks in 33:08. Van Halen: 35:13. Van Halen II: 31:14. Women and Children First: 33:08.

But look what happens when Sammy Hagar steps in for 5150. It's 43:02. OU1812: 50:09. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge: 52:08 Balance: 53:19

CD's easily crashed 40 minute limit of a single vinyl record and gave artists more time to play around with. What were two record sets became single compact discs. The problem was with more time to fill, more filler got in that would have otherwise been left on the studio floor.

One of the worst purveyors of the "a little ain't enough" and "too much is not enough" school of overkill is Janet Jackson.

Miss Jackson (if you're nasty) is the second most-talented member of the Jackson clan who can dance almost as well as her late brother, but can't hold a candle to him vocally. She has a thin, breathy voice which doesn't have a lot of range or power, but is perfect for short stretches of well-produced pop and funk where her limitations can be masked by recording studio wizards like the team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Her breakthrough and best album, 1986's Control clocked in at an economical 37:12. It got in, made its mark and got out.

But three years later, Jackson's Rhythm Nation, a loosely themed concept album stretched things out to 64:28. The follow-up in 1993, Janet, was even longer at 69:39. There were good songs on these albums, but there were also now spoken interludes, raps and introductions that padded and extended the running time.

Then Jackson just went nuts.

The Velvet Rope: 22 tracks. 70 minutes.

All For You: 20 tracks 70+ minutes

Damita Jo: 20 tracks 65+ minutes

For 20 Y.O. she dropped back to 49:54 and 16 tracks while her last album, 2008's Discipline was slightly less so at 53:55 and back to 22 tracks in its playing time.

Simply because digitally recorded music gives you more time to say something doesn't mean you have enough material to fill that time.

Not to pick on Janet Jackson or Van Halen, but making a lot of music is not the same thing as making great music. Particularly when young people aren't listening to entire albums any more. They want a song or two or three and then they're done and ready to move on to something else.

They don't have the time nor interest in sitting there for over an hour listening to Janet Jackson fake an orgasm.