Between late 2008 and early 2009, thanks to suddenly making more money than I ever previously had, a suggestion from the shrink I was seeing to pick up a habit unrelated to alcohol (I chose collecting vinyl), and an exponential increase in both hard disk space and time spent in front of a listening device which contained my entire music library, I started buying a lot more albums every year. Like triple what I'd previously purchased. In 2009, I picked up over fifty new albums I'd never before listened to. That was a lot while working 70 hours a week, going to grad school, and trying to maintain a relationship.
Within six months, I realized I was treating every album like it was a McDonald's product—in and out quickly, with little thought, and I'd only return to it if something immediately stuck and stuck hard; even then sometimes not because there was too much new to deal with. I found people would ask me whether I'd heard something and I'd say I had, but then I'd have no distinct recollection of anything about it. I couldn't say much substantive. As a teenager, after I first got serious about music, I was always proud to have memorized in order the titles of every track on every album in my collection; to have memorized the lyrics of every song by every artist I considered Top Tier.
This was before home internet, so for some bands I was into, I sat and transcribed all the lyrics by ear on a series of index cards and filed them alphabetically in separate plastic boxes for easy access. I remember writing out the lyrics to the fast parts in "Gave Up" and "Ruiner" over and over to be sure I got them right while my friend sat across the room playing Wolfenstein 3D; they were the last two I needed to learn. Ironically, I didn't take notes in school.
Obviously, as an adult, I don't have quite the same amount of time or intellectual/emotional energy to invest in listening that I did when I was fourteen—I'd need another six hours in the day. And even if I did, as someone who's always been pretty into exploring new music, every year I find at least one or two artists with whom I'd like to keep up and, well, over twenty-five years, you do the math. There's just too much.
So, back then, I established some very baseline rules for what I expose myself to. I gatekeep myself hard, for starters; I don't stream music because the list of what I maybe might want to check out immediately becomes endless, which bothers me so much that I start to frantically move through it, and it turns into a frenzied McMusic situation all over again. I had to accept early on that I will never get to everything awesome much less all the "maybe might be intos."
With the exception of maybe 30 individual tracks a year (usually one-offs from either artists who only have a few songs out, old nostalgia joints, or things I know are exceptions in an artists career and therefore don't warrant extra exploration), I only buy whole albums. Each album gets a guaranteed minimum of five attentive and undistracted listens—not like a spin in the background while I'm doing something much more consuming. And the fourth or fifth listen I spend reading along with the lyrics (if there are any); Genius has made this part much easier. I try to keep my ratio of new music purchases to about 80:20—current year:anything older—if only because I don't ever want to be the person who thinks art died when he/she/they were twenty-nine. Even so, I've got a running list of about 10-15 albums in my queue at all times (which I'd do just about anything to catch up with I have yet to, for instance, listen to Reznor & Ross' Waves).
Still, I'm having some problems with my approach and I'm not sure which or how many I can rectify. I often feel a little overwhelmed by everything out there. I want to appreciate every new record I buy—even the ones I don't end up liking are worth spending some time with—and I don't want to do anything that turns new music into McDonald's product, but I'd like to be able to check out more because it feels like I don't have enough time. And as I get older, I realize I remember less and less of every year (thanks, monotonous and disinteresting jobs to which we sell our consciousness and labor for at least a third of every day!). A favorite novelist once wrote that memory is like a pitcher of water and, by the time you're eighteen, it's half-full. I was twenty-three when I read it and thought it was bullshit. I am just forty now and terrified by how true it seems to be. I've been wondering if I should alter my approach.
So.
The broad question is this:what's your listening process? How do you handle new music? But here are a few guideline questions which I'd love to see broken out in your answers by number (selfish reasons only: I feel like it will be easier for me to process them). Question zero kinda sets the tone for me—I probably have little in common with primarily streaming/playlist/individual track listeners—but I'm still interested. And no, I don't expect anyone to have exact numbers though, as you might have guessed even without looking ahead, I absolutely do. I just want to hear from other people.
0. What percentage of your new music intake is albums and what percentage is just stray tracks?
1. How many new (new to you) albums do you purchase/screen each year?
2. How many albums by new-to-you performers do you check out each year?
3. How on top of new (actually new) music do you try to be? What percentage of the new-to-you music you check out every year is released in the current year?
4. How many listens does each new-to-you album get before you decide to move on? Does the number of "required" listens change whether it's "good" or not? Do you ever abandon something after just one listen? Do you listen to a new-to-you album more than, say, five times if on listen five you still don't like it?
5. How often do you revisit albums from past years which you've already screened?
6. How often do you go back and check out an album you didn't really enjoy?
7. Consider an old favorite artist who is still making music, but which you no longer enjoy like you once did. At what point, if ever, do you stop checking out their new records? I know this will be largely case by case, but I think there are probably for everyone some baseline trends.