What is your favorite way to listen to music?

[Freypower]

I have to say I shuffle playlists too. When CDs first came out & they had shuffle, I was delighted. I just like the unpredictablilty of it. I really don't think that says much about me.

[Tiffanny Twisted]

loud as i dance around the kitchen lol

[WalshFan88]

Definitely albums and organized. I hate surprises! I'm anti-spontaneous.

That said I do like my Pandora Radio and whatnot but generally it's albums for me and sometimes just skipping around to my favorite tracks within an album.

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Another reason I like CDs is when you have a fantastic concept album, such as Hotel California, Desperado, or Strange Weather it is especially satisfying to listen to the entire album from start to finish, IMHO.

[Prettymaid]

I agree Dreamer. Some albums just need to be listened to from start to finish. I remember when I was young, that was the only way to listen to music - there was no shuffle feature! To this day,when I hear a Beatle song I can 'hear' and remember the song that followed it on the album.

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Yep, PM - I remember people telling me about that. Of course, I'm not old enough to remember it myself.

[WalshFan88]

There are very few albums for me I can listen to front to back.

Just a few off the top of my head.

Hotel California - Eagles
Sticky Fingers - Rolling Stones
Back In Black - AC/DC
Toys In The Attic - Aerosmith
IV - Led Zeppelin
Second Helping - Lynyrd Skynyrd

[EaglesKiwi]

What I guess I'm really curious about is this: does anyone think that there is something to my logic, that listening to albums, cd's or playlists means you tend to like order in your life, shuffling means you like to mix things up in your life and listening to the radio means you enjoy not knowing what's going to happen next?

I'm a bit of a control freak, and when listening to music most of the time I like to know what's coming up. I do like to shuffle a selection of CDs - but then I've chosen which CDs are going to be shuffled!

[sodascouts]

Yes, and there used to be great agonizing over sequencing on an album. However, I'd say the importance of album sequencing started to deteriorate because of the CD, when it became MUCH easier to skip songs.

Few people hated songs on an album enough to get up and gingerly move the needle to the next precise groove (careful not to scratch or miss the spot), nor to bother with guessing how long to fast forward on your cassette to make sure you didn't overshoot and miss part of the next song. Instead, they just let the songs play, even if they didn't like them all that much.

However, hitting a skip button was (and is) easy as pie. Plus, many CD players had a shuffle feature as early as the late 80s. I know that's when I first started "shuffling" - when my family got their first CD player in 1989.

Artists miss the days when people wound up listening to the whole album in order because I think they hope that by doing so, people may grow to like songs they initially didn't. There's some truth to that, but I think the higher percentage weren't learning to love a song. They were simply tolerating the songs they didn't really like in order to get to the ones they did because it took too much effort to skip them on an LP or tape. Now, thanks to the CD and then the iPod, we no longer have to suffer through filler. The Long Run without Disco Strangler? Yes, please. lol

[Topkat]

I like to pick the artist I'm in the mood for & then shuffle the mix. There are usually more than one album of the artist & I'm happy with whatever may come up in the shuffle. I don't mind the element of surprise.

Occasionally, I will pick the entire song list & shuffle that. Sometimes a song that I may have forgotten about comes up in the mix, so I like that.

I only listen to a full album when I get a new one, so I can get familiar with it & decide which songs are my favorites.
My most recent album is Don Felder's so I have been listening to that full album lately.

At work, I can sometimes use my ipod, so I put on the radio, just to see what they are playing
It's all good