undiminishing returns
I rarely do the replaying things over and over as an active choice, simply because i feel the invisible pressure of all things i haven't listened to, and then all the things i haven't listened to twice
getting stuck on a particular record sometimes happens involuntarily, though, like an addiction, and there is a voluptuous pleasure to succumbing to that - like the voluptuous pleasure in allowing yourself to reread a favorite book for the umpteenth time when you've never got round to reading e.g. Proust, or [hesitates for a moment before confessing] Kafka. spurning all the improving and expanding experiences you should be having for this regressive, repetitious pleasure.
less strictly on topic but related - i am very interested in the repeatability of pop music - this is less about active choice but listening to the radio - how there are certain songs that you never tire of hearing, that they never fail to work - radio rock classics like Boston "More Than A Feeling", Van Halen "Jump", BoC " don't fear the reaper", the big Fleetwood Mac or Abba tunes... Usher's "Yeah"... "don't stop til you get enough"
it's a property peculiar to pop i think
they are a fair number of movies that you'd happily watch three times maybe in close succession - or watch again after a reasonably long gap - but there are hardly any movies i think that you could watch 20 times... you would get into the diminishing returns zone... Whereas there's loads of songs that you could play 20 or 100 times and still get the exact same buzz
i suppose it's partly to do with duration, a song or track is so much shorter than a movie, let alone a book
but it's also to do with plotlessness, the lack of a narrative pay-off, most songs are not really stories as such, the build and release works in a different way ... and the way that music hits like a drug, you can administer it as a way to change your mood - or if it comes on when you're idly listening to the radio, it changes the energy in the room or the vehicle