Comments on: How we learned to stop listening to music

Other than the folks buying vinyl, is there anybody out there who actually listens to music?

[G_Slade]

I'm a bit of both. which kind of means im constantly listening to music. When i walk to work i listen to my zen stone on shuffle, when im playing my xbox i listen to music from a usb drive on shuffle. When im in the car i listen to albums. But i also spend time just listening to albums(on CD, at 22 im too you to have been in the LP age). But when im just listening to albums it tends to be older stuff that im listen to more.
I think the medium that the album would have been listened on at the time of being produced has a large effect on how the album is structured and how it feels. A zeppelin album for example because it would have been produced on LP originally, feels like a single piece of music with several parts to it. Whereas if you take most modern albums in todays top charts, it feels like a collection of singles thrown together on an album. because its either going to be listened to on CD, where people just skip to whatever track they want to listen to, or they download specific tracks online. Im rambling here, does anyone understand what im trying to say?

[minimalist]

The iPod is just a medium. The music is still the message. If you want to listen closely you will listen closely. People who use the shuffle feature to provide background noise are just casual listeners. They exist now and they existed back in the days of CD's, cassettes, 8 tracks and LP's. I think you are looking at the past through rose colored glasses.

I have bought fewer than 5 CD's in the last 4 years, yet I am buying more music than ever. And I buy complete albums and listen to them from start to finish and I rarely use shuffle. I have over 500 CD's in boxes and 2 crates with over 200 albums in my closet. Yet its all hosted off a 750GB music server. I enjoy the flexibility and fluidity of the new technology to bother getting wistful about the "good old days".

Just because you use and iPod or listen to mp3s does not mean you stopped caring about music.

[pubmat]

Great and sensible post. A get nausea when audiophiles start talking about the good old days, or describe playing records as a "religious experience" or "organic". Ugh.

[jsternbe]

I do a little of both. I do like to work with "background music" because its not distracting. Usually its just a radio or something. I also try to spend time at home actually *listening* to music, though. I have a headphone setup kind of like the one you wrote about recently (SACD/DVD-A player -> Little Dot MkIV -> AKG K701/Grado 325i). Its amazing how many subtleties you can hear in a performance you have heard many times before. I used to also listen to LPs a lot, but trying to keep a cat from playing with a spinning turntable is a challenge I am not really up for.

[SomeAudioGuy]

I think it's just a convenience thing. There are some groups where I can tell great efforts have been made to make an album. A series of songs meant to be listened to from beginning to end. Their are other groups where I don't get that same sense, but I still enjoy a lot of their singles.
I started buying music on cassettes. When I listened to music on cassette, I only listened to my fave albums (or maybe fave sides of my fave albums). When CD's came out (especially with CD burning) I started only listening to my favorite songs. Now with MP3's I tend to listen to only my favorite parts of songs...

Unless it's a REALLY well put together album.

[minimalist]

"Recorded music is the worst thing that ever happened to music."

I think recorded music is one of the BEST things to ever happen to music. Without the studio-as-an-instrument we would have never had such great pieces of sound art as ******* Brew or Sgt. Pepper.

[G_Slade]

yea i suppose you cant really compare zeppelin with some of the crap that comes out today, maybe its just because zeppelins albums were so well made that they world more as a complete piece rather than a collection of singles.
I just feel that the way its so easy to skip track\album\artist on mp3 players, its having an effect on the production of modern music.

[cromeyeller]

When I go to bed at night, I put something on the stereo. I only hear the first few cuts before.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I can't work with music playing unless I'm doing some mindless task, so I don't play much background stuff.

[G_Slade]

*sorry for the re-post, annoying typo!*
yea i suppose you cant really compare zeppelin with some of the crap that comes out today, maybe its just because zeppelins albums were so well made that they worked more as a complete piece rather than a collection of singles.
I just feel that the way its so easy to skip track\album\artist on mp3 players, its having an effect on the production of modern music.

[AUDIBL]

Great point Steve. I completely agree with you. I think everyone that has posted comments is missing the point of your blog...

Sure we're all thankful and respect the benefits of recorded music, however it's invention was certainly a vehicle for many of us to stop "listening" to music and just simply "hear" it.

The question is:

"How many of us sit down and listen to an album front to back with out doing ANY other activity?"

I do once a month. I would do it more often if I had more time. Thankfully in between those times I have my iPod, some burned cd's for the car and a MacBook full of mp3 files.

[stonecutter2]

"Do you ever just listen?"

I do. Unfortunately, these days the albums that entice me to just sit and listen to them are few and far between. '07 and '08 have actually had some great offerings that have made me sit and listen, nothing else, a few times. I fondly remember listening to Radiohead's OK Computer in 1997, and it made me consider the very same point you're making in this blog. Recent albums that have made me stop and listen include The Shins - WIncing the Night Away and Wilco - Sky Blue Sky.

[audiophileghst]

unfortunately your right most albums these days are not really put together with the thought of people actually listening to them from first track to end. the mainstream thought today is go big or go home and if you cant do that in one song then you have made it. I'm only 18 and missed the LP age (and don't have enough money to spare for a turntable). but when ever i go out and buy an album (about once a month) i listen to it all the way through.

[HevnHira]

Like you said, hopefully younger generations will pick up on "listening" to music. I'm 16, put out 400 dollars for an A/V receiver and a 5.1 Surround just to enjoy my MP3's. I quickly realized they sounded terrible when played on a competent system, so I coughed up 200 more dollars for an Audio Technica Turntable.

Now I listen to 20% vinyl, 30% CD's, and 50% MP3/Lossless. I try to stay in the 320 kbps range, but my budget limits me to pirated stuff. Im trying to convince my peers to follow me, and listen to music, at least for 30 min a day, without doing ANYTHING ELSE. Just sit in bed, pop a CD in, turn it up, and chill.

That's what artists want.

[Thomas, David]

I CAN'T BELIEVE MY EARS/EYES

Contrary to the audiophile party line, that pristine quality is necessary to appreciate great music, I believe this is preparation for the introduction of a new format, or a cry to end DRM.

LMAO, vinyl reached a height in sound quality. It wasn't great sounding "because" it was on vinyl (there are a lot of other contributing factors, so the final medium is more moot than some would like you to believe).

To this day I still enjoy whole albums, if they are good ones, and no, it's not vinyl (it's digital). But the TRUTH is, as someone else posted, enjoying music has EVERYTHING to do with musical compositions themselves.

Consider our current pop culture. Enough said.

[jjbraunius]

I think the problem really is quality vs quantity - nowadays we have quantity.

[research1st]

Steve pegged me on this one..... I started out "life" as a music listener. Born in '63, I listened to Mom and Dads 45's and LP's from the 50's and 60's, while growing up. By the late 70's I was buying some of my own Vinyl and listening to them on a crappy integrated stereo system. Mom and Dad were/are not audiophiles. Went off to college in '81, that's when music became more background noise, also didn't really have money for "frivolous" items such as albums, CD's, or stereo equipment. In '86 I got my first real "career" job. Some of my 1st purchases in my 1st apartment were some component stereo pieces. And I started to actually listening to music again. Now 20 years later, I find myself rarely listening to music. Music is usually relegated to background noise, while doing other thing. And when I do find myself just listening, it's usually followed quickly with some snoozing. Don't know how it happened, but the rat race caught me..... And actually listening to recorded music is one thing that I have sadly lost... Now that I recognise this loss, maybe I can make an effort to get it back.... hopefully...

[alegr]

""Recorded music is the worst thing that ever happened to music"

That's pure bullshht. Compare number of people able to afford to get into fine concert halls often enough to familiarize themselves with all Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies in different interpretations (and other composers, too), against number of people that got full set of LPs and CDs with all those compositions and have listened to those many times, that made them able to practically recite any of those.

Compare number of performances times hall capacity with number of CDs sold.

See, a ticket to LA Phil is $70-$150, but a Mahler's 9th with Benjamin Zander CD can be bought for $20.

And no, people ARE playing instruments more than in old time. Of course, old times are always better because we were getting younger chicks. Oh well.

[Digitalvinyl]

Not as much as I used to..another advantage of LP's is that you can actually read the liner notes

[pubmat]

They also caught things like "consumption" or "rheumatism", died from a catching a cold... died at 50... or during childbirth. It wasn't all that great...and those records sounded like crap too.

[pubmat]

I know man. I can't possibly describe to you the RELIGIOUS experience I get when I turn on my ipod, and connect it to my receiver...its positively ORGANIC the way I'm connected to the music. Yep, kids just don't listen to music the proper way anymore.

[cardes]

I tried to put an LP in my iPod because I heard LP's sound better but it didn't work. Any advice?

[John72953]

As a vinyl junkie (I have over 3,000 LP's), I tend to listen to them approxinmately 40% of my listening time. Several times per week I'll come home, put on a LP, grab a cold beer and just sit and listen and relax. I don't want to get into a discussion about which format is better and why, because it really doesn't matter. The point is to take the time to listen to music as a dedicated activity. And that means setting time aside...it matters little what format is used in enjoying that experience.