Albums or Singles?

Are you an album person, or a single person? It seems that a lot of the industry has become more geared towards releasing singles as opposed to albums, and a lot of younger people (30-) tend to be more single listeners than album listeners. 

I'm personally an album listener. I like to take in an artists entire artistic vision. That doesn't mean that there are not songs that I somewhat gravitate towards, or even skip...but for the most part, I sit down and listen to a full album. 

Maybe I'm weird, I don't know.

It depends. I listen to most of my music via Spotify playlists I create, and for that it really doesn’t matter whether album or single. However, sometimes I will buy an album I really like, and will often play those entire albums. In that sense I prefer albums

I prefer albums, nothing is worse than hearing an awesome song and then you go to the band page and it’s the only one they have…

I voted for singles although maybe I misunderstood the question.

My preference would be to put on an album and let it play all the way through.

However....very few albums are consistently engaging.  The overwhelming majority have me reaching for the skip button.  
I find that frustrating.  So I tend to do most of my listening with playlists of different bands or artists.

Albums with almost no exceptions.

Albums. No contest.

99% of the time it's whole albums.  I listen to probably 4-6 hours of music each day while I'm working and it's all full albums.

The only time I hear "singles" is typically when I'm in the car with the wife and she wants to turn on the radio.

I’m less picky than many of you. I rarely skip songs on albums. I try to find things to like about even the weaker songs and I like to hear the whole work in its entirety. There are exceptions, of course.

Pethead wrote:I’m less picky than many of you. I rarely skip songs on albums. I try to find things to like about even the weaker songs and I like to hear the whole work in its entirety. There are exceptions, of course.

Same here. Certain albums over the years have become all-time favorites of mine due to this approach.


That said, it's worth mentioning that the most recent single I've been enjoying is the final Beatles track "Now And Then". 


...and also I just wanted an excuse to use the Beatles smiley-emoji-thing.

This is the best day of my life.

Thank you all for your cooperation.

What Seth said.

MagnusPrime wrote:

Pethead wrote:I’m less picky than many of you. I rarely skip songs on albums. I try to find things to like about even the weaker songs and I like to hear the whole work in its entirety. There are exceptions, of course.

Same here. Certain albums over the years have become all-time favorites of mine due to this

Absolutely. Many times songs that start off at the bottom of my favorites on an album will move closer to the top later on.

Same thing has happened to me. Songs that don’t grab my attention at first often grow on me as I listen to the entire album several times

I'm an album guy, but after the next Warpriest album, it's going to be singles, as it's just too time consuming and exhausting.

I can't like [more Warpriest] and dislike [no more albums]... so I'm just gonna dislike that!  Your blood, sweat, and tears are worth it for my listening pleasure!!!  

I like albums because they make me find ways to enjoy a bands weaker songs and learn to appreciate them. Take for example Theocracy’s "The Gift Of Music”….it’s arguably their weakest song and while it starts off cheesy it ends all thrashy and metalled up. I can appreciate that. As a single, I’d probably never play it though.

Kerrick wrote:I can't like [more Warpriest] and dislike [no more albums]... so I'm just gonna dislike that!  Your blood, sweat, and tears are worth it for my listening pleasure!!!  

I need more fans like you. And that Gary dude. and A!sh!

Albums. I didn't even listen to any of the singles from Mosaic when they came out. Waited for the whole thing.

I usually wait to hear the singles until the album comes out, as well. I also did that with Mosaic.

Used to be an album guy, but Megadeth - Dystopia changed all that.  I bought the album and played it through several times.  The only song I really liked was the title track...  And from there on out I just sample songs and download the ones I like.  No more full albums.  I enjoy more artists this way as well by just listening to the songs that appeal to me most.  Life is too short to hear 4-star songs, when I could be listening to a 5-star song by someone else.  There's a much greater selection these days, so now I can get the best of the best rather than listening to inferior music just because "Well, I paid for it and, dangit, I'm gonna get my money's worth out of this whole album."

However, I do sometimes buy an entire album just to support the artist and their message.

I prefer albums.  When hearing a single of a band that I really like, I want to hear more from them.

Depends on the artist's intention, and somewhat my mood. Sometimes I prefer single songs because I want to listen to a larger variety you don't normally find on albums. Sometimes I prefer a longer period of a single sound.

Overall though, it depends on how the artist handles it. If something is really meant to be an album, it shouldn't just be a collection of songs. There should be something unifying all the songs on the album together. Most commonly it's what we call "flow" but it could be leitmotifs; a story told in the lyrics; just something that makes it a complete picture of the artist's vision across several songs. 

Sometimes though, an artist really can tell their whole story or paint their whole picture with only one or two songs. I enjoy this, too. There should just be something that makes it seem like a complete listening experience, though I lack the words to describe what it is.

I buy CDs almost exclusively, so albums.  I also tend to listen to them in their entirety (yes, I skip occasionally).  Almost everywhere I listen to music has a CD player.  If it's digital (iPod or my computer) it's either an album anyway or the entire catalog on shuffle.  The only playlist I use is my Christmas one.

As far as the two Warpriest CDs I have, that's what I listen to from you.  Digital singles, even if I got them, would rarely get played.

Albums for the most part.

But, back in the day I collected a lot of 45s, and still have them.

Being a collector of CDs and vinyl, I'm mostly an album person. Its like reading a book - it's the whole package. However, back in the 80s where I live in Newfoundland there wasn't any Christian stations thay play any Christian Rock except for the secular video station MuchMusic that would play Stryper and on occasion a few other bands. So I relied on demo tapes to listen to at a local Book and Bible but even then they didn't have anything or much that was heavy until much later. We relied on word of mouth.

These days we have singles to rely on released to youtube and I find after an album is released all the songs are uploaded to youtube by an user to sample. I use singles as an introduction to an album even if I'm familiar with an artist or have the previous albums.

With todays technology, being busy with life and having a fair size colkection, I find that with buying newer albums or older albums you over looked years ago, you forget parts of albums easily. Especially when I would listen to an album once or twice and put certian songs like 5-7 per album on my phone to listen to in my car, I would be less familar with the rest. I find I've gotten away from enjoying the whole album like I should.

Kerrick wrote:I can't like [more Warpriest] and dislike [no more albums]... so I'm just gonna dislike that!  Your blood, sweat, and tears are worth it for my listening pleasure!!!  

Just wait until Warpriest has released 9 singles and then download them all on Bandcamp Friday, and call it an album!