G
Gordon_Sims
Guest
I thought I had brought this up before but I couldn’t find it. I’ve had several discussions this week with various people about how, when and why they buy music, which is something some people still actually do.
Do you prefer to buy whole albums or individual songs? My daughters are still kind of baffled by the idea that anyone would buy a complete album instead of buying mp3’s individually. “Why on earth would you buy a song you haven’t heard or that isn’t on the radio?” I’ve explained to them that, back in my day, unless you wanted to buy a 45, you had to buy the whole album/cassette. Sure, cassette singles eventually came along, but until my late teens/early 20s, if I wanted to listen to something in the car it was whole albums and mix tapes. And we’d actually listen to the whole album more often than not, even when there were only a couple songs on there we liked. I’m still very much a whole album person. There are a few exceptions, especially when a song’s only available as a bonus track or on some soundtrack or compilation, but most of the time if I like a song by someone, I get the whole album.
Are you a completist when it comes to your favorite artists? For example, do you have every Three Dog Night album, or just their greatest hits? I’m absolutely a completist, to the point that I once paid almost $40 for a greatest hits CD that was only released in limited numbers overseas just to get a single song I’d never heard before, but that I’d heard wasn’t all that great to begin with. I’m not that obsessive now, but for the bands I really dig, I have all their albums and, when feasible, all their obscure singles and B-sides as well. Thankfully, I’m not as bad as my one friend who’s such an obsessive Eagles fan, he even has all of JD Souther’s albums.
Do you still buy your favorite bands’ albums even when they’re past their prime? A good example of this is the Rolling Stones who, frankly, haven’t had a decent hit since 1989, and a really great song since 1981. Do you keep buying Neil Diamond’s albums out of habit, or do you finally admit that he kind of said all he had to say with “America” and ignore his new releases? I’m kind of torn on this because there are a handful of bands I like who have a song or two on their later, tired albums that I really like. Then you’ve got cases like Journey who really haven’t been the same band since ditching Steve Perry. I’m kind of torn between that completist urge, a fan’s sense of loyalty to my favorite bands, and an all too frequent feeling of being let down by a band whose talent seems to have left office about the same time as the Reagan administration.
Do you prefer to buy whole albums or individual songs? My daughters are still kind of baffled by the idea that anyone would buy a complete album instead of buying mp3’s individually. “Why on earth would you buy a song you haven’t heard or that isn’t on the radio?” I’ve explained to them that, back in my day, unless you wanted to buy a 45, you had to buy the whole album/cassette. Sure, cassette singles eventually came along, but until my late teens/early 20s, if I wanted to listen to something in the car it was whole albums and mix tapes. And we’d actually listen to the whole album more often than not, even when there were only a couple songs on there we liked. I’m still very much a whole album person. There are a few exceptions, especially when a song’s only available as a bonus track or on some soundtrack or compilation, but most of the time if I like a song by someone, I get the whole album.
Are you a completist when it comes to your favorite artists? For example, do you have every Three Dog Night album, or just their greatest hits? I’m absolutely a completist, to the point that I once paid almost $40 for a greatest hits CD that was only released in limited numbers overseas just to get a single song I’d never heard before, but that I’d heard wasn’t all that great to begin with. I’m not that obsessive now, but for the bands I really dig, I have all their albums and, when feasible, all their obscure singles and B-sides as well. Thankfully, I’m not as bad as my one friend who’s such an obsessive Eagles fan, he even has all of JD Souther’s albums.
Do you still buy your favorite bands’ albums even when they’re past their prime? A good example of this is the Rolling Stones who, frankly, haven’t had a decent hit since 1989, and a really great song since 1981. Do you keep buying Neil Diamond’s albums out of habit, or do you finally admit that he kind of said all he had to say with “America” and ignore his new releases? I’m kind of torn on this because there are a handful of bands I like who have a song or two on their later, tired albums that I really like. Then you’ve got cases like Journey who really haven’t been the same band since ditching Steve Perry. I’m kind of torn between that completist urge, a fan’s sense of loyalty to my favorite bands, and an all too frequent feeling of being let down by a band whose talent seems to have left office about the same time as the Reagan administration.
