With how convenient and accessible it is to listen to any song you want, I think the consumption of music, at least for me, has become really disposable. As weird as it sounds, I've barely listened to full albums so I'm not really attached to many of them. Growing up, the music I listened to were either from the radio or songs my dad would put on my DSi.
YouTube, Soundcloud, and Spotify really got me into the playlist mindset. I don't think there's anything wrong with making playlists and personal mixes but I think I missed out on the meticulously sequenced experience of full length albums.
I understood it once I was able to drive by myself. The beat-up Volkswagen Jetta my dad would let me drive recklessly only had a CD player so I would burn albums or borrow them from his CD collection.
Road trips with just me and those CD's created a bond between me and those albums. No shuffle, no song discovery algorithm, just one album on loop until I changed the CD.
Now that I've left Spotify (because of their support for ICE and AI military drones), I've found myself in the Qobuz ecosystem. It's been pretty nice, I gotta say. Qobuz is like a combination between a music streaming service and an online music store. The experience reminds me of how iTunes works. Do people still use iTunes?
With Qobuz, I'm strictly listening to albums and I've really enjoyed the experience so far. Honestly, I don't think Qobuz is catered towards the playlist listener anyway.
As you might have read from a previous post from my blog, I've also been looking for a digital audio player (a modern MP3 player). I'm hoping to explore more albums on the go in a tiny form factor. I think this year will be a fun year for me when it comes to music. I almost forgot I should be working on my own music too! I'll get into that another time, though.