Singles or Albums : how do you consume music?

[Soundofus]

What kind of consumer of "new" music are you?

Are you a 'single' consumer? Are you an album consumer?

Do you listen first the "trending" songs (most played) out in singles before an album considering them as the 'best'?

Do you prefer go deeper into an album, listen all the songs, make your own opinion of the quality of songs and create your own selection without care of what is trending?

Personally, as I dig new music all day long, I have to listen both : singles and albums. When it's a 'debut' single, there is 2 options (you like/you don't like) easy to select.

When a new artist has already one or several singles before, the option is to compare the new one with what he did before. If it's a debut album, usually (not always) there was a single before, if I liked it, then I listen the whole album and I select another song than the one already out in single.

When it's a well known artist with a new album, my process is the same, I listen the whole album (for some songs, I listen 10 sec. Its enough to decide to go further or to skip it) but for my selections I never chose a song already out before (there is 98% of chances that I selected it 2 or 3 months before), I always select a new one.

To be short : I am tired enough of the dictatorship of the "number of likes", "number of views", "number of plays", "number of numbers" ... 🙂

Your turn 🙂

[spiritofradio]

I'm definately an album person. If I hear a song I like that might be the impetus to check out an album or wait for its release, especially if its a debute. If I dont like the rest of the album I tend not to keep the "single" I've heard previously. For example, I don't have a spotify playlist made up of only single tracks I like, other than my Discovery Playlist which I intend to go through at some point to check out the full albums. In terms of sourcing new music I have three main sources, either the radio, the "recommended" or "discovery" tabs on Spotify or live streams from blogs or the online editions of newspapers, The Guardian is particularly good, I tend not to notice things like number of plays or trending.

[diestro]

Mostly depends of the artists. Certain artists are,obviously,album-artists only, and others (poppy almost always) in my opinion, are made for listen via singles.
But,obviously, and asking to the question, I prefer listen the entire job of an artist 🙂

[user-removed]

I'm absolutely an album consumer because I really don't care if a song has a lot of views/like.

I love to go deeper and to know more about an artist before judging him because most of the worthy songs often don't become singles.
Ok, maybe I don't listen the entire song if it isn't interesting but it is important for me to understand the style of the whole album and not only of a song that makes a lot of views.

[D34DW0lV3]

I'm a glutton... I go through an album till i find a song i love then i binge listen to it :), Then i find another song, And so on etc etc 🙂

I find that most often the songs with the LEAST views/plays are the most original/best 🙂

Also, I like to start from the artist/band/groups FIRST release and work my way forward in time, Really lets you hear their sound in full 🙂

[bianconiglio]

in my experience it depends on the artist. if the artist is one of my favorite, i usually prefer to go immediately with the entire album. if the artist sounds like new to me, i often use to listen to tons of singles until the artist turn into a new favorite to me.

[Matthewshaw955]

I'm an album person personally I want a full story of an artists work on a particular album rather than a few singles here and there I honestly love deep cuts from my favourite artists if I'm making a playlist I usually put some deep cuts on the playlist. Now talking about singles i get miffed when I hear a good song and go to to the artist page and there is only the single song and not the full album.  

[naavo]

My process is similar to yours! If I find a song I like I tend to give the entire album a shot, but I've found that many artists tend to release albums where the majority (if not all) the songs sound the same!
One of my favourite features is the "Go to song Radio" when I really like the vibe of a song, and this helps me find tons of similar songs but from many different artists that tend to be more independent so it's great for finding new music too.

In essence, perhaps I'm a bit of a music snob and I prefer singles over albums most of the time 🙂

[crowdiegal]

I tend to listen to the singles before an album and if the singles are really good then I'll check out the album or if the singles  are terrible then I'll still check out the album because there might be some deep cuts that are absolute gems that I will go back to (Halsey's "Manic" is definitely a case of that for me). I will listen to the whole album right through, a song has to be really obnoxious or badly written to skip it. 

I'll also listen to an album if it's got some critical buzz about it. If the critics are raving about an album it makes me curious. 

[AdamDamon]

In my case, it depends on if the album has already been released or not. If it’s a new album by an artist that I already have been following, then sometimes the artist releases a single or a few singles before the album release date. In this case, I don’t hesitate to listen to the single(s) because I might like them. Then, similar to @crowdiegal, regardless of whether I like the single(s) or not, I also listen to the album when it’s released, since it may have other tracks that I like more than I liked the single(s).

If I’m just discovering an artist and looking through their discography, and they have both an album and single(s) from the album, I tend to go straight to the album and listen to all the songs on it, because there are more songs there that I might enjoy. Then if I like a song that was released as a single previous to the album, the only time I generally add the single version to my library is when I like the cover art or title of the single better than I like the artwork or title for the full album.

[Sebasty]

For various reasons I try to give the whole album a listen.

1. I've found so many goodies that way.

2. It's a smooth ride for the next several minutes to >2 hours.

3. It just feels right listening through the entire release as well, not just picking sample songs out of it.

If it's an artist that I know I like something from, I'll run through their new releases without thinking twice. If it's an artist previously unknown to me, then it depends. Sometimes I do try out a whole release (the fact many release EP's these days is making it kind of easy), especially when someone has suggested that way, or there is something else that sparks my interest.
Other times I check out a few tracks and if I don't feel like it, I'll leave it at that...

Another thing I do with mainly those new artists that sparked my interest is running through their entire discography.