Okay, so maybe that title was a little dramatic… but the modern music world is so different from the ones that existed ten, twenty, and fifty years ago. Like anything on earth, progress of this caliber comes with its pros and cons. We are moving forward, but in that process we are forced to leave things behind. 

On the plus side, streaming makes music more accessible than ever before, allowing millions of listeners to hear a new song as it’s released rather than needing to wait for a physical copy or spend money on a digital download. While some music streaming platforms do require a subscription cost, that price usually works itself out to be much lower than paying for each individual song or album would be. 

Small artists can pick up traction thanks to social media – gone are the days of needing music industry “connections” to have a song that turns heads. Streaming also offers an extremely personalized experience from music recommendations to messages and special merchandise directly from the artists themselves. We have nearly every song we could ever want to hear, right at our fingertips, right in our pockets.  

However, the “age of the algorithm” has certainly come with its negatives. Physical media and digital sales have been on the decline since the emergence of streaming, meaning that artists must rely on most of their money coming from lesser physical media sales alongside merchandise and touring. Streaming does provide some income, but it definitely accounts for a much smaller portion than the others mentioned. Many platforms pay artists very little per stream, some even fractions of a cent. While physical releases are definitely making their comeback (particularly in the case of vinyl records), they are nowhere near as popular as they were before streaming. Vinyl can be expensive to press, especially for smaller artists, and the longer production time also requires a dedicated fanbase who will be willing to not only wait for but also to buy this release. Digital sales being near defunct means that, because we aren’t spending as much money on the album, we are inclined to be less appreciative of the songs on it. With streaming subscriptions, there are literally infinite amounts of music to listen to, so why would we waste our time with a single album? Why wouldn’t we shuffle playlists or skip to the songs we like? Why wouldn’t we put our trust in the almighty algorithm that feeds us things it thinks we’ll like on a silver spoon? 

WILSON-TAYLOR: Why did you want [FANDOM] to be, very specifically, an album as opposed to what loads of people do now, which is, kind of… dropping songs here and there? 

KNIGHT: I just think it’s (…) important to have, you know, full bodies of work. (…) And not to overemphasize the past or anything, but you remember great albums. You’re not like, “ah, yes, when that single dropped,” you know what I mean? 

(From Waterparks’ interview with Rock Sound, 2019) 

SOCIAL MEDIA & “THE ALGORITHM” 

The aforementioned algorithm (and honestly, today’s music industry as a whole) pushes artists to release lots of singles or shorter EPs rather than full-length albums. Art becomes “content” to be churned out into a million TikToks, Instagram posts, and the latest trends. The process of creating a collection of songs is rushed – the goal is no longer a cohesive piece of work but rather the musical equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks (AKA… what becomes a trend or garners the most streams). 

Social media is the number one place that music is marketed nowadays, so artists — especially smaller or independent artists — may feel the need to include their latest single or upcoming song in every post they make in order to build excitement or keep people’s interest. I don’t know how many  Instagram posts I’ve seen “antidepressants” attached to or how many Allison Ponthier TikToks I’ve seen that are set to “Karaoke Queen.” I love them both, and of course there’s nothing wrong with promoting your art. But… sometimes it gets to a point that almost makes you sick of hearing the song you once loved, all while simply trying to support the artist. This push for “content” over “art” also seems to rush the process of an album’s creation. The end goal becomes quantity over quality rather than a time capsule of the band’s sound and lyricism at the time of an album’s release. 

WHAT’S IN AN “ALBUM”? 

The concept of the album (defined as a collection of songs with seven or more songs) is especially important when it comes to albums with a cohesive storyline, concept, or circularity (Pink Floyd’s The Wall; My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys; Waterparks’ Greatest Hits; Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia; and a million more there’s just not room in this article for). Regardless, it’s important to listen to any album in order, no matter if it tells a story or not. The track-list you have in your hands was probably rearranged at least three dozen times to get to where it stands now, meaning that the people who worked on it chose this arrangement for a reason. Maybe that’s because one song leads into another, or maybe that’s really just where it landed after all the others were placed, but either way, track six is track six and not track seven or three or twelve. Shuffling a brand-new album is practically sacrilegious. And anyway, hearing one song fade into the next for the first time (like “NOID” and “Rah Tah Tah” on Chromakopia) is a whole new kind of high that you just won’t get on shuffle.  

So often, we tend to give an album one chance to make a first impression. On our first listen, we recognize the tracks we might have heard as singles or the ones that went viral, we start to form the scaffolding for which ones are going into the regular rotation, or maybe they shoot right to your current favorites playlist. If it doesn’t immediately WOW us, we tend to toss it out. Most of the time, we don’t even give it enough time for us to learn the lyrics, to dig deeper into the substance and the message of what we are hearing. Now, of course, there is no one “right” way to listen to an album, but as a self-proclaimed person-who-talks-too-much-about-music, here are some of my personal tips on how to appreciate an album in its entirety.  

THE TIME… 

  This may be divisive, but I’m of the opinion that you should sit down to listen to a new album when you really have the time for it. Yes, you’ve been waiting for this album, and yes, your best friend is already blowing up your phone asking what you think about it. But really, I promise that waiting until you can really sit down to listen to the album in full will allow you the extra brain-power to think about it and appreciate it. If the album is 48 minutes long and you have to be at work in thirty, leave it until you get off, even if your drive will be long enough to finish the album before you clock in.  

  Another thing to consider might be the time of day when you are listening to the album. Our world moves so fast that we feel like, if we are up late enough to see its release, we might as well just listen to it right then. But if you’re not a night owl, falling asleep during your first listen is counterproductive. Even if you’re exploring an older album for the first time, it’s best to find a time that you are totally able to appreciate it, be it early in the morning or late at night. 

  I’m a complete night owl, so I usually do listen to new albums when they drop simply because it’s the time when I feel most alert. When it comes to older albums, though, I tend to listen in the afternoons or evenings when I don’t have a lot of other work to do. Something about the hazy in-between-ness feels right for these works that I’m hearing pretty late in the game. 

THE PLACE… 

  Find somewhere quiet to listen to your album, someplace where you won’t be so distracted that the music fades into the background but also someplace where you won’t feel like you’re in solitary confinement. Listen alone, or at the very least make sure your companion is someone who won’t interrupt you much (if at all). Lay flat on your bed, or your floor, or curl up in your favorite chair, or sprawl out on the deck in a patch of sun. It doesn’t really matter where so long as you’re comfortable and relaxed, ready to absorb the music in its entirety.  

  You also may want to consider the platform or medium that you want to experience the album on – Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, CD, vinyl? These are all rather different from one another, so be sure to choose something that feels familiar for you. If you don’t have access to a streaming service without ads, you might consider finding mp3 files of the songs so that you can hear them without ads sandwiched between the artist’s messages. If you have trouble staying off your phone when using it for music, maybe you could try checking out a physical copy of the album from your local library or borrowing one from a friend.  

  I usually turn to Spotify for my albums, but on occasion I’ll pick up something that sounds interesting from a thrift store or an online shop and let my secondary listening happen in the car while I drive to work or dinner or whatever else is on my schedule. I prefer my first listen to not happen in the car because I find that, even on the most peaceful drives, the music becomes static in my overactive brain, but you might find that driving helps you to focus. Again, it’s all subjective here! 

THE IMPORTANT STUFF… 

  Possibly the most important thing about listening to a new album is that you should leave your reservations at the door. Whatever singles you’ve heard, whatever Pitchfork or Rolling Stone review you read, you need to learn to take that off like a muddy pair of shoes. This band, this singer, whoever it is, has crafted this album for you as a piece of artwork to be contemplated, not just as content to be consumed and thrown away. If you go in expecting a repeat of that last album that you really liked, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Almost every group on earth has some album with a bad reputation because people were angry that they wanted to try something new – just look at Twenty One Pilots’ Scaled and Icy (2021) and Fall Out Boy’s MANIA (2018). You love them or you hate them (and I happen to love them, but that’s a whole different can of worms).  

  Try to listen without distractions, at least for that first time. Listen with headphones, with the music right up against your eardrums, and shiver when you hear the guitarist’s pick scratching the metal strings or the vocalist’s breath catching between lines. It sounds corny, but really listen and try to pinpoint where you feel the sounds in your body. Maybe you feel the bass and the drums in your chest, the guitar in your stomach, the piano in your temples. Maybe you think the music sounds green or blue or like the smell of printer ink – feel that! 

  If you must do something with your hands, open your notes app or a blank page in your notebook and write down your first impressions. Even if you’re not much of a music critic, it’s always fun to see how your opinions on the songs change or stay the same over time. I’ve had songs that I hated the first time around that ended up on repeat months later. If you’ve ever heard that “distance makes the heart grow fonder,” I think that phrase can most definitely apply to albums and their distance from release day. 

Give it one chance. Then give it another, and another. After the first time, listen to it everywhere – in the car, at work, while you do homework. Splinter it out on playlists, and then remember how much you loved (or hated!) that album and circle back. I’m not telling you to listen to it until your brain melts out of your ears, or to listen until you never want to hear the songs again. But find the ones you like, find the little sounds and slides and breaths in the rest of the songs that make you appreciate their construction. 

IN CONCLUSION… 

  At the end of the day, how you listen to an album is between you and the artist. I’m not here to tell you the definitive “right way” – no such thing really exists. Maybe your “right way” involves listening to the songs while you hole up with a pan of watercolors or a pack of crayons, maybe it involves picking up the CD and listening to it on a long drive. All that matters when it comes to an album is that you throw your reservations out the window, listen in full, and appreciate it as art rather than content. Forget the algorithm, forget skipping when something doesn’t please you immediately. To listen to an album is to experience it, to take in the whole of it and get uncomfortable in the process.  

( You can hear more of my thoughts about music on Aces Fireside Radio! I curate two shows, one country and one alternative rock/pop-punk, that air on Tuesdays and Thursdays respectively from 4:30-6:00 pm, as well as the occasional artist spotlight for the musicians closest to my heart. )