Everybody knows that there’s been a big change in the way we listen to music presently. Thanks to digital music files and even music streaming services we can easily put tons of our favorite songs on our smartphones to listen to however and whenever we want. Since its so easy to arrange our music how we like, lots of people listen to playlists and specific singles from albums instead of entire albums themselves. So I’m curious, what do you do? Do you listen to entire albums or do you listen to playlists featuring singles from many different artists?

Personally, I’ve always been an entire album listener. I like trying to figure out what the artist was going for in lyrics, attitude and music style throughout an entire album. Concept albums are my favorite for this reason but there are plenty of other albums where you can get a sense of what the artist was going for while not exactly classifying as a concept album. Bob Dylan’s “Another Side…” is a good example I think. This album isn’t close to a concept album but you get the sense that he’s moving away from what people in the folk music community want him to do and following his own path. The timbre and tone quality of his voice even changes in the album and is different from his previous albums as well. Those who just listen to one or two songs from that album might not get that takeaway.

Now, I’m not saying that listening to one or two songs from an album is a bad thing. That has it’s own benefits as well. The first thing that comes to mind is that you can make one kick ass playlist with awesome songs that can play for much longer than any regular length album. It’s also cheaper to get one or two songs here and there instead of buying a whole album every time you find a song you like. Ninety-nine cents looks a lot better than ten dollars and you’re able to build a very specific personal music library. So specific and personalized that while other people press next to skip songs on their music app, you may hardly even touch your next icon to skip a song because you love every song you own.

So which camp do you fall in? When you listen to music, do you listen to entire albums from one artist or do you listen to playlists with one or two songs from a bunch of different artists? Let me know in the comments or anywhere else you can get ahold of me. I’m just too curious.