How would you characterise the majority of your music listening? Are you:
1. A box set/catalogue binger?
2. A butterfly?
3. A shuffler?
I’m definitely a butterfly, flitting between albums (artist to artist, genre to genre), but also have a tendency to binge from time to time. I NEVER shuffle. What about you?
Butterfly/Shuffler. Will move from album to album of various people but there is always the thrill of an ‘all songs shuffle’.
Butterfly, flitting from old to new, genre to genre, favourites to new-to-me, and back again. Gleefully.
Neither box set nor shuffler…..butterfly, always “old,” nearly always play an original track-listing all the way through, today’s was “Strange Days” by The Doors, and normally play the same record 4 or 5 times on the spin.
4 or 5 times? That’s kind of a binge in its own way; maybe a butterfly binge!
i.e. stopping off at the same flower for an extended go at the nectar.
Yep, it always just seems easier to keep on playing the same disc.
How people listened to albums when they only had 10/20 albums to listen to, I guess, and, as the playing length of the average album is usually under 35 minutes, I’m soon on to another one anyway.
True. I must admit to having played the new Bruno Mars CD twice in a row today, partly for convenience and partly because it’s brill.
I’m zipping through a load of stuff today that needs one more listen before being put on the shelf upstairs for the first time, as the backlog is getting a bit untidy. I didn’t help matters yesterday when I came home from the chazza with 11 jazz albums. Oops.
I’m the King Bee, baby, I got too many hives
Or butterfly\moth\binger – a buttery minge, if you will
Butterfly / shuffler. Couldn’t be less of a binger.
Deffo not a binger or a shuffler, so I must be a butterfly.
Butterfly binger – have bought two boxsets since the start of the year and am really keen on the Marc Almond set but worried I might only like half of it.
I’m one for the butterfly shuffle. Sounds like an onanist’s technique, and in a kind of way, it is.
I do enjoy a good shuffle; just had Louis Jordan, then Quintessence, followed by Snoppy Doggy Dog. I may not spontaneously put on such a combo. I keep albums for the car, as it takes me an hour to get to work, which is ideal for a single CD.
No shuffling – although exceptions may be made for purpose-built playlists, and/or YouTube rabbit-holes.
Normal mode is “Butterfly” (with an undercurrent of binging and related listening)
Box set blow-outs happen at least monthly when I decide to immerse myself in a particular artist or genre (this activity may result in a blog post, or me excitedly championing my new favourite band to anyone who will listen).
The other prime inspiration for a box set binge is reading a good biography, or seeing a good documentary about the subject
As a complete music snob I cannot be compartmentalised.
Really. ‘Box’, ‘Butterfly’ or ‘Shuffler’?
Ms Breakfast, I am disappoint.
‘Bore’? Perhaps.
But I am happy.
Musically.
I am in control.
The question referred to the majority of your listening, but okay. Your answer was still revealing, so thank you.
I’m a listening tart. I indulge in all three methods on a regular basis.
Everything you say sounds filthy. I love it. Keep it, er, up.
A listening tart is always best, otherwise they’re liable to get your “order” wrong.
In contrast, a listing tart is no good for “water sports”.
A glistening tart, however, is a premium product.
A little tart, i.e. a tartlet, is perfect for first thing in the morning.
I agree. You don’t want to be overstuffed before breakfast. Even if you are only planning to have a mini one.
I personally can’t get enough Quiche Lorraine – delicious hot or cold.
I do like a Victoria Sandwich, but a Gypsy Tart is hard to beat
Apols for my absence. Mr B had presented me with a large piece of meat. Then we had our dinner.
Well, normally of a Sunday I present Mrs M with a piping hot Yorkshire pudding. I usually end up making a bit of mess with the gravy, mind.
Ah, but can you make a gypsy cream?
Shuffler/Butterfly/Binger in that order.
Basically. I’m a music hoarder with almost everything I own digitized (plus a queue of un-digitized bootlegs) and there is loads of stuff that I’ve never heard.
My default listening mode is to randomly play tracks from my digitized library that have zero plays. New CDs generally get a listen before digitizing, but not always. New boxsets rarely get played straight away in their entirety.
My random “Now Playing” list is generated by adding a random selection with zero plays to the bottom of it whenever there are less than 5 items left to play. It’s drawn from my entire library.
If a track comes up that really excites me, I’ll play the whole album if I have it. Sometimes repeatedly if I deem it especially good.
I also have quite a few unplayed podcasts, particularly from Resonance FM and Afropop Worldwide, who are very prolific. These get included.
I have an automatically-generated playlist of all new musical additions to the library, from which I add albums/concert downloads/freebies etc. to the “now playing” list when I feel like it, so as to keep up with my acquisitions. Currently I’m adding roughly 2-hour daily chunks of Mr Springsteen’s “Born To Run” audiobook. Yesterday I also played the cover discs from the latest Mojo (mostly sub-par covers of The Kinks’ “Something Else From..” album) and Electronic Sound (a rather good new mix by Coldcut).
Yes, all well and good.
But, are you in control?
Barely.
A skin-of-the-teeth job probably.
Phew.
Oh, if anyone wants the new Mojo, plus the CD (still sealed), drop me a line.
I’m an unashamed shuffler. I’ve got a garage full of CDs and LPs but now listen via Spotify almost exclusively, including music I already have in the garage. I have tons of (mostly) hand-made Spotify playlists and shuffle is the way to go for me.
I’m a butterfly. I rarely have time time to listen to a CD all the way through in one sitting. There is a CD player in most rooms in my house so what I listen to depends on the pile of CDs in a particular room. I would only buy a box set if it was for a genre or label, never by a single artist. I listen to some 6 Music and JazzFM programmes at the weekend just in case I hear something else that I have to own but don’t have time to do justice to.
Binger, usually on a genre or time period.
Binge, binge, binge. Shuffle is the tool of the devil…
Shuffle with a side order of Binge
Most of my listening is from playlists. At the top of the week I bung together a couple of albums that I haven’t played for a while, usually from contrasting genres. Rotate those for a few times till just before I’m getting tired of them. Repeat the process again. Some shuffling and bingeing at weekends.
Right now it’s disc 1 of Deutsche Elektronische Musik Vol 2 and Pacific Ocean Blue. The disc ends with “Himmelblau” so it’s not as much of a jumpcut as one would expect.
I had you down as a CD man for some reason (except for your recent vinyl excursion). Turns out you’re a Digital Dude. Well I never.
I have a grandad’s iPod. Yep, I’m carrying everything I need right here in my trousers. Trouble is, it’s obsolete and any day now it’ll conk out, ruining my pleasure.
Mrs Moose, however, will be relieved.
When that happens you’ll have to get some little blue batteries for it.
Well maybe. For now it carries on going for several hours a day and, while I’m a bit embarrassed to show it to people, it’s still nice and shiny.
I just shuffled The Monkees while making chilli sausage rolls. I guess that makes me a shuffler……..
(By the way how’s the Top 40 recording going?)
Haha! I’ve been busy listening to CDs (like a butterfly). Funnily enough I just had the new Mokess one on.
Basically an album-sized butterfly but like @mike-h I do work through my digital music library on the ‘one plays’ – everything has had at least one play (of a 22k store, small beer I know by afterword standards).
I’m the opposite of a binger. I’m worried if I play an artist too much I’ll get bored by them, so favourite artists have to be strictly rationed. Hence being able to come back to Station to Station yesterday and play the intro to Stay at least six times just marvelling at it.
Probably the best bit of his best album. Amazingly amazeballs.
But it’s been scientifically proven by the Afterword boffins, and empirically reinforced by the 6Music lab rats, that STS is not his best album.
Butterfly with periodic nose dives into binge when something grabs me. Never shuffle.
Amen, brother Twang.
Me too Twang.
Something will pique my interest….a tv doc, an article, an Afterword blog….then I will binge until I’m told off.
Butterfly with rare binges. I do sometimes shuffle and love it when I’m in the mood, but I force myself to play full albums when time allows.
Butterfly with occasional binges often prompted by a concert.
Binger mainly, with an occasional shuffle if I’m feeling indecisive.
I tend to fully immerse myself. If I’m into something, i’m REALLY into it, no half measures for me.
At the moment I’m a confirmed binge shuffler. I’m trying to play all 25,000++ tracks on my iPod. I’m up to nearly 700, so a long way to go. Observations:
1 There’s a hell of a lot of music on it I’ve never heard before
2 Shuffle Off to Buffalo hasn’t come up yet
3 The Shuffle God is having an Everly Brothers morning
4 You have to keep the iPod charged or it forgets where it got to and you have to start again.
Of course a binge shuffler is also by definition a butterfly, no?
A Chrysalis spins into me.
Back in the days when music was expensive I was a binge listener. I would explore different artists back catalogues once I got into them. So, 89-92 was the Stones, Dylan and Beach Boys, much of the mid 90s was Zappa, i have a batch of Elvis and Bowie CDs all bought around the millenium etc.
Since music got cheap, I’ve been buying too many cheap CDs and box sets because I still have the mentality of someone who thinks these things are expensive. Everything looks like a bargain so I snap it up. I’m like an alcoholic on their first booze cruise to Dieppe. This has made me more of a butterfly.
But I’m trying to stop that. I’m buying less music and giving the stuff I’ve bought recently more listens. I’m trying to be a binger again. There’s nothing healthy about being a binger, but then again this is a site for people with unhealthy relationships with music! I miss the depth you get when you’re a binger.
I’d say our relationship with music is perfectly healthy. It keeps me sane, for starters.
The only part which isn’t healthy is my bank balance (as I buy physical media and posh playback equipment), but without music I’d be bingeing on booze/fags/drugs/cars/bikes/skiing/sailing/something else more expensive.
Binger, by the way.
Butterfly, then a binger/completist when something new-to-me catches the ear. If I like a particular album I then have to have everything by that artist. (Expensive habit; possibly why I slightly resist Dylan/Young etc.)
Never shuffle, it’s just too disconcerting. It leads to having to check the device too much to determine the track/artist; which would actually be good for me if I could in any way be arsed.
Agree, and I’m too flighty. Tracks I love can really piss me off following something unsympa or at the wrong time. And it could equally be the other way round on a different day. I’m not good with uncertainty.
Ha, yes same here. I like to know that I’m listening to X album by Y artist. And that’s that.
Bollocks to shuffle.
[control issues]
A harsh one. A fucking critical one. I will eat you and your extended family if you try to pass off your meandering musical offerings as anything other than they are. I am the Jesus wolf đș
Howl before me.
All of the above. Mainly butterfly, moving from album to album, and from time to time will binge my way through an artists work, usually in chronological order (Van, Dylan, Symphonies of Shostakovich, etc). Will occasionally stick the iPod on shuffle and see what pops up and will often listen to my Spotify playlist of new records to checkout on shuffle.
Shuffler, sort of. Tend to bung one or two artists’ music on the phone then shuffle around it until I get bored.
Mostly shuffler/butterfly – often tend to listen to new albums, but I choose only a few tracks from each. I never listen to an entire album at one go. At present I am having a very rare binge, working my way through Gretchen Peters’ recent free 100 track download. I have to whittle it down to about 20 ones I really love. Also I’m not one for having umpteen versions of the same song by one artist and cannot be bothered with alternate takes etc. The one original track and a live version is usually enough for me. However in Gretchen’s case I will make an exception.
The Gretchen batch is fab isn’t it! To make matters worse I bought a 4 track live in studio acoustic only versions CD at the last gig so I have multiple versions, plus the book with the live CD/DVD. Can’t have too much Gretchen.
Just working through the 100 Gretchen also. Chronologically. Most enjoyable it is too.
Just finished! Amongst ones I’m keeping are the more unusual tracks that I haven’t heard before like Prairie Melody and ’67 Pontiac. Also the duet with John Prine and Return of the Grievous Angel, and her take on the gospel song Farther Along. Was interesting to hear the songwriting interview segment when she discusses the initial lack of success in the USA of On a Bus to St Cloud when they had such high hopes for it. She mentioned how gratified she was it then got so much airplay in UK and said it taught her an important lesson that getting a high number in a record chart has no relation to how the song can then get into the hearts of so many people.
Butterfly mostly
The album is dead
Long live the album
On a possibly counterintuitive tip, something I have noticed from exclusively shuffling in my car is that this really helps me to evaluate an album. When picking favourite records from memory the strongest tracks often obscure the lesser ones. But when all of the songs are popping up with the same frequency on shuffle, those albums which are chock full of lovely goodness rise to the top…
Serial shuffler, although I’m trying to be more a butterfly.
Without doubt, a catalogue binger. If it’s someone I really like, I need the lot. I also explore genres and collect as much as I can. I make playlists, in order of studio session or realse date (whichever is handiest and best, attached dates and best artwork to the tracks and save the playlist.
I’m only interested these days in old stuff. Dexys is as new as I get. Currently researching and collecting Scottish Ballads and Balladeers.
Existing playlists – as complete as I can manage them – include Sinatra, Cash, Everly Brothers, Ewan MacColl, Clancy/Makem family tree/Bowie 45s/Georgie Fame and many many more.
The only shuffling I do is from the stereo in one room to the one in another. My sources are vinyl, CD, and radio. Never got the download thing, it terrifies me.
Bingeing also something I don’t ever do. Leads to overload and boredom, even hatred.
Suppose that makes me a butterfly, radically cutting from funk to pop to classical to free jazz to prog to country to mor to soul. That’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it.
“The only shuffling I do is from the stereo in one room to the one in another.”
Now that’s my kind of shuffling! And now I can’t help picturing you doing this in your slippers.
After a recent trip to Ireland, where I tried out my younger brother’s spare pair of “slippers”, I’m actually considering buying some.
Phew, Mini, almost got me there!
The appeal of shuffle for me is that it’s like a radio station where I like all the records (even if I don’t necessarily remember them), unpunctuated by unwanted spoken interruptions from some berk who thinks he is funny – this last function I can provide myself.
Absolutely, MtM, and do you make up DJ talking as one track fades into another? Fecking great, ain’t it!
I even do the traffic report.
“If you’re travelling south on Jack Kaye Walk this morning, be careful of ice, dog turds and skunk-crazed psychos”