Do people ever listen to an albums anymore?

I’ve been thinking about this one for some time now.  Gone - I think - are the days when you would put on an album as a ‘mini-event’, and listen to side 1, flip it over and then listen to the whole of side 2 (for younger generations, substitute 'side 1', 'flip it over' and 'side 2’ for ’the whole thing' ).

It seems that everyone except for people say, 50+, skip from track to track, artist to artist, band to band.  I’ve watched people do it even to the extent of listening to part of a ‘favourite’ track before skipping onto the next track/band/singer.

There’s nothing quite like getting stuck into an album in my opinion.  Previously, people would ‘work’ through an album - not every track can be  your best one.  You would end up knowing that album through playing it again and again…and you would remember it sometimes word for word, note for note, years later.  Full discussions could be had over the album or the band/artist.  I still listen to full albums to get the max out of them…I just limit myself to amount of ’stuff’ so I can actually take it all in, within the amount of time that I have.

I wonder if today’s stuff is not as good or it’s simply as case of ‘heard it, like it, forget it , next’.  It’s a real shame that the investment we used to make in music, seems to have dissipated.  Or am I mistaken? 

Just cast your mind back to the album sleeves that you remember and the feelings that they evoke…is there anything like that from the last ten to fifteen years?

© Ray Nelson 2019