Interested to find out everyone’s different listening routines/habits. I’ve been pretty concerned recently that I don’t really spend enough time properly listening and appreciating music. I seem to spend most of my time manically streaming clips on the internet. Almost daily I check through boomkat, fact, dissensus, youtube, pitchfork, honest jons, resident advisor (the list goes on) – there’s crazy amounts of stuff uploaded pretty every day, and obviously inexhaustible amounts of great music through history waiting somewhere to be found.
Thing is, although it’s all well and good having so many different sources to find music, I’m often not listening to anything properly due to the rate with which I’m skimming through things, often if something isn’t really doing anything for me after a few seconds I’ll skip onto the next thing. Sometimes rapid streaming aint really too much of a problem – as occasionally it can be abundantly clear that something isn’t for you, but quite a few times I’ve wrongly discarded something because I’ve not given it a proper chance, my ears are a bit fatigued from overload and my head is fried from staring at a screen too long. I feel like I spend way too much time just listening to music for the sake of it, it’s only every so often that I discover something that gives me the same buzz of why I got obsessed with music in the first place. But I spose you have to be willing to trawl through copious amounts of shit to get these epiphanies.
Basically it seems there’s an overload of available music, and I was wondering how everyone narrows it down, and finds the time to properly sit down and appreciate music. 6-7 years ago when I was 13-14 and didn’t have a laptop or go on the internet all that much I used to spend all my money on buying CDs and I would properly cherish everything I bought and listen through every second of the CD countless times, to the point I knew my collection like the back of my hand. I would properly appreciate all the music I had, and grew an appreciation slowly for some albums through repeated listening. I'd give things more of a chance, and digest more styles of music.
I don’t really think I do enough of this now because of the rapid rate with which I search for new music. Often by the time I’ve bought a new record, I sometimes find myself on the internet checking out clips trying to think of the next thing to buy rather than sitting down and cherishing my purchases. I also have a backlog of mixes and music from mates’ computers, and rapidshare downloads (I like to try before I buy – sorry to anyone who considers this immoral). For example I’ve got probably around 100 unlistened to Juke tunes on my hard drive – and I’ve got no idea whatsoever when I’m gonna properly go through them.
I find that I often tend to best appreciate music when I’m on holiday or on the move somewhere – walking about, train or whatever when the internet isn’t there as a gigantic black hole of distraction.
Sorry if that was all a bit long winded, but really interested to know how everyone balances everything out, anyone else feel like they suffer from same kind of overload? Would be good to find out where everyone else sources their music from as would be good to branch out a bit more again.
Thing is, although it’s all well and good having so many different sources to find music, I’m often not listening to anything properly due to the rate with which I’m skimming through things, often if something isn’t really doing anything for me after a few seconds I’ll skip onto the next thing. Sometimes rapid streaming aint really too much of a problem – as occasionally it can be abundantly clear that something isn’t for you, but quite a few times I’ve wrongly discarded something because I’ve not given it a proper chance, my ears are a bit fatigued from overload and my head is fried from staring at a screen too long. I feel like I spend way too much time just listening to music for the sake of it, it’s only every so often that I discover something that gives me the same buzz of why I got obsessed with music in the first place. But I spose you have to be willing to trawl through copious amounts of shit to get these epiphanies.
Basically it seems there’s an overload of available music, and I was wondering how everyone narrows it down, and finds the time to properly sit down and appreciate music. 6-7 years ago when I was 13-14 and didn’t have a laptop or go on the internet all that much I used to spend all my money on buying CDs and I would properly cherish everything I bought and listen through every second of the CD countless times, to the point I knew my collection like the back of my hand. I would properly appreciate all the music I had, and grew an appreciation slowly for some albums through repeated listening. I'd give things more of a chance, and digest more styles of music.
I don’t really think I do enough of this now because of the rapid rate with which I search for new music. Often by the time I’ve bought a new record, I sometimes find myself on the internet checking out clips trying to think of the next thing to buy rather than sitting down and cherishing my purchases. I also have a backlog of mixes and music from mates’ computers, and rapidshare downloads (I like to try before I buy – sorry to anyone who considers this immoral). For example I’ve got probably around 100 unlistened to Juke tunes on my hard drive – and I’ve got no idea whatsoever when I’m gonna properly go through them.
I find that I often tend to best appreciate music when I’m on holiday or on the move somewhere – walking about, train or whatever when the internet isn’t there as a gigantic black hole of distraction.
Sorry if that was all a bit long winded, but really interested to know how everyone balances everything out, anyone else feel like they suffer from same kind of overload? Would be good to find out where everyone else sources their music from as would be good to branch out a bit more again.