Consuming Music: Then vs. Now
On the way to preschool and back I would listen to the same Taylor Swift album, the same One Direction album, or the same Adele album playing over and over again. Was my dad probably sick of it? Yeah, but I had no consciousness of that and solely wanted to sing every song on the album from top to bottom and replay my favorite tracks. Tracks which I only knew by number since the car didn’t read the song titles.
In elementary school I preferred the radio over albums. Without it, how would I know the songs they played in the classroom during class parties? How would I be able to join the dance performances we choreographed during recess? So day in and day out Z100 was always on in the car.
As I entered middle school I was introduced to Spotify and the whole world of digital playlists and streaming. Going into 6th grade it seemed like every kid spent the entire class period with their AirPods in listening to music on their computers. Suddenly I felt behind and confused, so like any other self conscious 12 year old I followed the crowd, set up my own Spotify account and everything. And for a while I enjoyed making playlists, mainly because you couldn’t listen to albums fully without a subscription, but it never really stuck. Even now the playlists I listen to are set lists of concerts or soundtracks to TV shows, they are all cohesive and have a visual attached to them.
Nowadays I spend my days listening to albums, and that’s the way I enjoy music.
I’ve done it, I’ve come full circle already!
All jokes aside, last year I went to a seminar Chris Hayes held at SUNY New Paltz, and he called what we live in today “The Attention Age”. An age where any piece of media has 10 seconds to grab our attention and hold onto it long enough to get the information across, otherwise everyone is onto the next thing. I mention this because I think this heavily relates to how music is consumed today. People will pick out the hits, the songs that went viral on TikTok for the catchy 30 seconds of the chorus, and put it on a playlist. Record labels know this, artists like Raye have spoken out on how it has limited the creative process labels give to their artists. Our habits do not only perpetuate our increasingly short attention spans, but also affect how artists are allowed to make their art for something more than a trending single that will bring in profit.
There’s something really special about albums that I have forgotten about in the age of music collages. This is a piece of work that the artist has spent X amount of time over, articulating the order of every song and incorporating it into a cohesive collection, something I think that is an incredibly tremendous process. So go out and buy those CDs and vinyls. Take a look at the track lists on Apple Music or Spotify.
Listen to albums.
