Playlists or Albums

Yeah, I concur with all of your comments and preferences, waff. But I'm 'old-school' too .

If I had one of the new portables I think I would like the capability to decide based on my mood. Sometimes I really like to listen to the same group do different songs for an hour or so and other times I would like to bounce around within genre. I doubt that I would want to listen to my entire collection randomly.

Playlists are great if you are in the mood for a particular type of music and don't want to select a new album each tme one finishes (especially useful on long trips).

Sometimes I travel for hours and I can select Classcial, Jazz, Rock, Metal, R&B etc. at the start and my iPod plays everything in that genre for me without me having to touch it.

simon

I'm old school as well, and like to listen to entire albums start>finish. I find that if I have too many songs that I like in a row, I tend to get bored and skip around a lot. There's no sense of contrast or release. Anticipating coming up to a song you really like is nice. Also, I get a rush when I get to a song that I really like after one I might not like so much.

Plus, I'm a completist so I like to hear everything the way the artist intended.

I too do the album thing, but I can also see the advantages of playlists...especially, (and I'm going to catch some major flack for this which I rightly deserve...) smart playlists.

As an IHP owner, I'm pretty limited to any real playlist features except for your basic run of the mill type. But lately, I've been using this program developed by J. River called Media Center, which has tons of smart playlist options and even hardware syncing (just to name a few of its tons of options).

Now, I've always seen the advantages of playlists in general because basically, you get to select your own ambience. For instance, if I'm in a mellow mood, (which is most of the time) I can make a playlist of my favorite Artist using only their most mellow songs. Sometimes you need this to not break your relaxed mood. Or let's say, you're with your girl, and you want a mix of music that'll keep her hips gyrating for hours on end...this is the way to do it...Um...on the musical side of course.

Now smart playlists, are also very handy because a good program such as the one I mentioned above, will keep track of certain values and always play what you specify for them.

The best of both worlds...that's what it boils down to.

What playlist does that ?!

I tend to agree with John.

Sorry mah brotha....you must get Yo' own !

Why would you take any flak for that? Smart Playlists are one of the greatest features available for the iPod. It amazes me why no other manufacturers have implemented them.

As for the question, sometimes I listen to albums. But more often, I listen to Smart Playlists, or to my entire library in shuffle mode.

personally, i ONLY listen to playlist. in fact, that is how i record onto my zen nx, into playlists.
each playlist for me is an individual artist.
i listen primarily to progressive music where song length can be quite long and prefer to hear a single artist at a time.
i also (personally) don't know why anyone would want to listen to songs they don't really like, purely for completion-ist sake.
an example of one of my playlists is below. as you an see it's quite lengthy and also spans 9 albums. if i were to listen to each album individually, it would take some 8 hours!
with playlists i get to listen to the band i wish, the songs i wish, in the order i wish. for me, playlists rock (of course, your mileage may vary).

Title...................................Artist.... ...Length
Siberian Khartru......................YES...........08:53
Yours Is No Disgrace................YES...........09:41
The More We Live - Let Go........YES..........04:53
And You and I.........................YES..........10:11
Sign Language........................YES...........03:2 8
Turn of the Century.................YES...........07:36
Mind Drive..............................YES..........18 :38
Long Distance Runaround..........YES..........03:30
The Fish................................YES..........0 2:36
South Side Of The Sky.............YES..........07:56
Rhythm of Love.......................YES..........04:46
Close To The Edge..................YES..........18:33
Owner of a Lonely Heart...........YES..........04:27
Roundabout............................YES......... .08:30
Awaken..................................YES....... ..15:36
Wonderous Stories...................YES..........03:50
Heart Of The Sunrise................YES.........10:34
Starship Trooper......................YES.........09:25
............runtime............................... ...2:33:03

Me, I like albums. Some albums have a flow to them, and just jumping around loses that.

Scott

On my MDs, I have discs that are direct copies, and I have compilation MDs where I group them by how hard they are, i.e. Death, Thrash, Metalcore, Hardcore, etc.

Yeah, but where do you put the extreme death polka??

LOL

i listen to albums