As a true son of album culture, I am forced to admit that I am increasingly preferring to listen to playlists, especially when listening on my own. A really good and large playlist on shuffle, and featuring different acts, can be really satisfying if the tunes are well chosen.
I find that I have two criteria for large playlists. Firstly, don’t load it with familiar favourites – boring – a majority of deep cuts is boss for me. Secondly, have some sort generic compatibility among the tracks, and reflect that in the list title. So I do lists with names like House Party, Grooves & Jams, Afro Beats, and so on.
Any thoughts on all this?
When I say ‘large playlist’ I mean about 400 tunes. Shuffling is essential.
Putting together a playlist requires time and effort on the part of the listener, which is all well and good if you can be bothered. I wouldn’t want to visit an art gallery and arrange the pictures on the walls myself. An album, its content and sequence reflects an artist’s creative vision. Many albums have succeeded or failed on that premise and it’s one I don’t think I’d like to lose. (Having said that I do recognise the convenience of playlists, and have put many together myself).
No I don’t think the album will die, for the kind of reasons that you mention.
I moved from albums to playlists when I adopted minidisc as my favoured format. Why play an album where you need a hand on the skip button when you can put 30 of your favourites by a band on a disc and shuffle away? Tracks can be dropped in or out whenever you like. I have massive compilations of my favourite artists, compilations by genre or mood and snapshots of what I was listening to in a particular year that reward relistening. 2005 and 2006 are particularly enjoyable.
For me Spotify playlists are an evolution of this. Something that you can set playing on shuffle and enjoy for as long as you like. I still play albums but the playlists and minidiscs are more frequently what I turn to. Over last weekend I put some old cassette albums on minidisc to enjoy on shuffle. Some have transferred better than others. Labour of Lust and Almost Blue shuffling away was the soundtrack of my weekend.
I still play albums. My daughter has dozens of Spotify playlists curated over a number of years. Some with over 1000 songs.
I’d say it already has done for the vast majority of music lovers ever since the ipod was around. Most LP’s aren’t good enough to play in their entirety, so why not?
That’s definitely part of it. And if you only ever listened to albums that are masterpieces from beginning to end you would be missing out on awful lot of great tunes, exactly the kind that make a good list.
Also I’m not sure why you specify large playlists. I have playlists which are cut-down versions of LP’s I love and I have no guilt in doing this.
In this way I get to play and enjoy works that otherwise I just wouldn’t listen to. I’m looking at you, “The Beatles” and “Sandinista”, to name just two.
Yeah I’m personally fond of big lists on shuffle because they surprise you, and I find that random sequencing creates novel effects in transition from one song to another.
I’m retired so I have the time for this kind of shit. But what I was wanting to hear about is precisely the playlisting behaviour of others.
I don’t often create and curate a playlist unless there’s a party or some other actual need for one. I’m usually content hitting ‘Shuffle’ on the whole library.
I like nothing more than selecting 500 random songs from my 58 and a half thousand song online collection – usually brings, as chinstroker says, many interesting juxtapositions and songs I have never heard before, often by artists I thought I knew well.
I am only about a fifth of that, but if I randomly play stuff from that I end up skipping a track then skipping another and then skipping again.
Yeah, that happens to me as well. I just mark the track with a thumbs down and it never appears in a random play list ever again.
Thumbs up, and it goes into the keepers, which I think affects the algorithm for what random tracks to choose in the future.
If it’s a completely fucking beautiful track that has me bouncing like a jackrabbit, or drumming along or harmonising, then it goes onto the ‘The Best’ playlist, which has a very exclusive door policy. It’s for playing when I only want to hear the cream.
Another fan of a good playlist here. There are a few albums I always enjoy in their entirety (Bill Withers At Carnegie Hall, A Hard Days Night, Kind of Blue etc) but my first port of call is almost always a playlist. It helps to have a proper theme for the playlist though. For example, Martin Horsefield’s ‘Sophistipop’ posted here a few days ago or Twang’s ‘Slide Masters’ from a while ago.
Nope records and cds for me. Almost never listen to playlists. When I do , its a bit like curating a radio show – the sequence matters, as it always did with its predecessor, the Mixtape.
I started with the mixtape, too.
On my iPod(s), I had playlists of whole albums. Streaming doesn’t seem to allow for randomising whole albums. Or am I just a luddite?
You can do it in Spotify.
And on Tidal too, which, I believe, is where the Tiggers roam..
So, I am a luddite…
Sometimes I listen to new albums on release. There are probably less than 20 older albums I feel like I ever need to listen to in their entirety.
Beyond that, it’s pretty much all playlists. They tend to have different purposes; I usually have a discrete one on the go for the given month mixing new and old stuff, then there are the ones for driving, or parties at home, or a lazy Sunday morning. When new albums come out I listen to them a few times, harvest out the better tracks into the requisite playlists and move on.
My playlist titling protocol is to just take a phrase or sentence I’ve recently read or heard a friend say and use that. I find it helps me keep them distinct in my head. Recent efforts include Sav & The Blank, Ruination Is Upon Us, All My Friends Are Dead, Good Fundamentals, Death To Tyranny and We Must Be Ninjas.
My preference is to listen on shuffle. I get the thing about sequencing, I’ve spent enough time making mixtapes and CDs to understand the discrete pleasure of ordering your tracks just so. But as someone said above, there’s also a real joy to the weird juxtapositions that shuffle throws up, and not much in music listening beats the precise right song appearing on your headphones at the precise right moment entirely by chance.
Having spent the first two thirds of my life avidly collecting them, I don’t seem to have the same emotional connection to the album that a lot of people on here do. I don’t really regard them as a “fabulous creation”; they’re simply a reflection of the physical mechanic via which music was typically delivered at a particular moment in time. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t move on, just as we’ll presumably one day move on from playlists.
Cool. I like your list naming strategy. Gets all creative like.
On reflection what this naming strategy appears to be delivering is a load of unused Mogwai track titles.
” not much in music listening beats the precise right song appearing on your headphones at the precise right moment entirely by chance”
Yes to this absolutely – when I was a kid I wanted a soundtrack to my life and I swear, when I step out of the house and press play on random 500, the app just knows what mood I am in and plays the right selection of tracks for me that morning. It is spooky (or self-conditioning to find connections in no matter what track) but I prefer to believe in this instance, God is a DJ.
I’m intrigued. Which twenty albums? Perhaps, you could have series of threads, Bingo Little’s favourite albums?
Oh god no. I think one round of that exercise was quite enough, and I doubt I could generate the same enthusiasm for albums.
Songs are my preferred unit of musical currency. I suspect the various songs threads probably called out most of the albums anyway.
I do Spotify playlists. Sometimes I even listen to ones Spotify has made like Sad Indie or Pensive Prog. One of these isn’t real. I do ones of single artists excluding the unwanted. Handy for The Beatles who always need pruning. Although I don’t listen to them much. I made some mixes for our weekend evenings when wine is taken. You soon find them getting stale though despite them lasting several hours.
Of course, playlists are perfect for pimping albums. 😉
I seem to have reverted from mainly playing playlists (or random tracks from my digital collection) to mainly playing (digitised) albums and the occasional CD, from start to finish.
Playlists compiled by others provide pointers to albums worth investigating, but I no longer compile my own playlists very much. Especially since I’ve given up playing music in my car.
Having said the above, my current project is to stream all of the Blue Note jazz albums I’ve not yet heard (and a few that I only have as mp3s) that have tracks in Blue Note’s bebop and post-bop Tidal playlists. With the occasional diversion in other directions.
Yesterday, for example was pianist Horace Parlan’s “Us Three” followed by trumpeter Lee Morgan’s “Cornbread” followed by a diversion into Goldfrapp’s “Felt Mountain” (courtesy of mentions on the AW Bond Theme thread) and then saxophonist Stanley Turrentine’s “Blue Hour: The Complete Sessions”.
Cued up for today from my own collection are Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers “Free For All” and violinist Jenny Scheinman’s “All Species Parade” featuring guitarists Bill Frisell, Nels Cline and Julian Lage.
Should I manage to squeeze them in while making some progress on my current book, I’ll stream saxophonist Tina Brooks’ “True Blue” and guitarist Grant Green’s “Green Street” and try and listen to the latest Private Eye “Page 94” podcast and last Sunday’s “Jazz Record Requests” on the BBC Sounds player.
I’m still album focussed but I’ve been listening to a lot more playlist than I would have a few year ago. I agree on random – very nice odd juxtapositions pop up. Some lovely lists have appeared here. One of my favourites came from Twang Jr which is probably not the thing for most here but in the right mood it’s brilliant.
Both for me. I have random playlists n my IPod but they have become familiar to me.
Much prefer putting my iPod of 23,000 so gs on shuffle and see what comes up.
The number of times that I get up out of my chair to check the identity of a song/ artist confirms the delightful surprise I get every time.
Side one, a brief pause while I turn it over, side two.
I am a dinosaur.
Never mind, all types welcome.
You are Tom Petty, and I claim my £5.
I do both but probably still more CD / LP listening. I do find playlists good for creating my own ‘best of’ and I have a couple of large playlists full of songs by artists where I only like one song of theirs, that I add to regularly, usually after ‘try before you decide not to buy’ listens. Those go on shuffle.
I rarely create my own playlists but I listen to playlists on Spotify a lot. I think of them more as replacements for the radio than replacements for albums. I’ll often hear tracks on playlists and then listen to the album… and then often go and see the artist live.
I think there is an “appointment” element to album listening, whereas playlists can be dipped in an out of and paid varying degrees of attention to – which makes them ideal for driving, doing the laundry, cleaning the bog etc.
There’s a growing phenomenon, which I’ve also experienced, where you sit down in front of the box and don’t want to watch a whole two hour film, so you watch the first episode The Good Place or whatever and find yourself turning off the tv at two in the morning having watched the whole series.
Having an enormous playlist ticking away in the background which you can leave at any time (but won’t because that bathroom is FILTHY) is easier than committing to what you will be hearing in 35 minutes time and paying attention throughout the listening experience..
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t find I listen to albums with any greater level of attention or focus than playlists.
The album format isn’t particularly sacred to me, so there’s no real difference between a collection of 12 songs by the same artist that were released as an album and a collection of 12 (or more) songs by different artists that I’ve compiled myself. Songs are songs.
Yebbut… you’re weeeeeerd..
An addendum to my earlier comments. I do create a playlist once a week where i try to create interesting juxtapositions of different genres.
It’s called a radio show.
CDs all the way… albums as intended, as need be, otherwise choice, quality compilations.
The latest Mojo CD (Beat Surrender) is wonderful, and I’d be amazed if any lumpen £200 jobs get anywhere near it in 2025. Over to you Dai!!!
‘Playlist’ sound too much like ‘DJ’ to me, and DJs c. 2025 know jack shite. No offence to such dodgers, obvs., just a statement of fact.
I’ve found myself in a property without a CD player recently, but with Alexa… and there I play Ultimate Live at the BBC by The Yardbirds and Davy Graham albums… and that’s all. I might well get the physical copies of the Davy Graham albums comp. (the 60s, nothing else is required) and that magnificent Yardbirds’ release (SOOOOOOOO much better that the ‘will this do’ Stones’ equivalent) as, in ten years, my money is on them not being there.
Huh?
Did you ask yourself how did I get here?
Huh?
Ok, I get it, it’s a dodger thing.
Triffic. Playlist. Sure to be good.
Thank the f*** the Beatles didn’t this amount of choice in the Golden Age. Paul must be cursing his misfortune!
I just remembered a use case for LP listening that I’ve been dying for a while now: watching live football on TV. I turn off the television sound and slap an appropriate classic on. Bit of Screamadelica blasting out for the first half, perhaps an Associates for the second.
It’s a vast improvement over most commentary and I kind of know what’s going on without being told. Can recommend.
A playlist would work just as well, I guess, I just sort of started with LP’s…
In celebration of this thread, I made a quick playlist.
Compilations, mixtapes, playlists, even albums – it’s all the same. Just a bunch of songs someone has stuck together, with whatever magic results.
I have to agree about the magic of something perfect for the moment coming on randomly. It’s like the perfect jukebox.
I made a playlist of most of the works of my favourite artists, about 120 artists. I have it near the 10,000 song limit (on Spotify). I put this on shuffle when I just want something familiar though there are plenty of songs in there that I’m not familar with.
I also have a few playlists that are just piles of albums that I want to hear, there just isn’t enough time to go through them from start to finish so I’d shuffle one of those lists- it’s my own radio station/jukebox.
No real theme to any of those, all genres thrown together, compilations anything that’s an album.
I have other smaller playlists around 200 songs long that I’ve built up over the years, that would consist of whatever song took my fancy at the time, could be something I have on physical format or something entirely new to me.
Then I have another one that I call my magpie list which is ones I’ve heard from the radio that I nick for my own list – not quite sure what the difference is between this list and the other 200 ish lists – it just feels less like my own choices. But as time passes I pretend that I curated them, which I have in a sense, into my own order. Again this is great on shuffle.
I do still like albums though. The pre- ordered format is quite robust isn’t it, it gives you a frame.
I am in the process of downsizing my vinyl, one of my criteria for keeping an album is whether I want to hear it the whole way through a side.
Sometimes for me, that dud- track three side two- suddenly starts breathing and two years after it’s first hearing, long after the others have attained mundanity, I’m obsessed with it.
I used to get annoyed when the track order of the tape was changed to fit the playing time.
Smart Playlists.
These allow you to play types of music without you neccesarily knowing what individual tracks would be.
So you have a bit of control but still allow the element of surprise.
AutoPlaylists in MediaMonkey let you set all manner of parameters to generate playlists from your media.
“A bit of control but still allow the element of surprise.” That’s just it, isn’t it? Once we have become used to this possibility, there’s no undoing it. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.
*strokes chin*