Never do that. I struggle to find the desire to buy a whole album from an artist simply because I often don’t like all the songs on it.
I am much inclined to buy just tracks from artists now, especially with streaming. I don’t see the point of albums these days.
Back catalogues of Artists from by gone eras, possibly.
Completely agree.
Although I draw the line at Dylan’s Under the Red Sky.
I tend to go through the following process:
Generally, with artists I like, I get off the merry-go-round at step 3. Very few make it to step 5. It doesn’t always have anything to do with how much I like the artist overall. Some geniuses are a bit hit and miss. While other more middle of the road stuff is just consistent. So I have all albums from an artist I quite like whereas, half the albums from one of my all time favourites,
That’s the same with me unless it’s a great live album I stick with collecting the studio albums
I don’t. But I really do like the opportunity to listen through a back catalogue, in temporal order, via streaming. That’s been one of the delights of streaming for me, listening to the development of an artist/group through time without having to buy all the media outright. I’ll buy the good stuff right enough, but leave the less good stuff alone, after appreciating what it might have meant in the development, to or from, the better moments 
It was reading your post that inspired mine @Suedkiez - I’m getting there with ACR. That’s the only one I’d like to have a set for.
Sonic Youth must be one of your two!?
I can’t recall if I asked, have your read Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor by Dave Haslam? I spent many a night in The Boardwalk in Manchester whilst he DJd. I tried reading his history of nightclubs, and failed to finish it. SYSOMF is supposed to be really good though!
Yep, Sonic Youth is the one, Giant Sand and Howe Gelb (and his various side projects) are the other. Though in both cases I ignore singles and “complete” is an impossible notion considering bootlegs and their vast live show online catalogues.
I am not collecting them obsessively either, but once in a while I buy whatever I find.
For a while a decade ago I had a third one and was trying to collect the whole SST Records catalog (370 releases or so) but stopped at ~150 when I realized just how much filler there is. (For a while towards the end they had been trying to build a superficially serious and large catalogue because they thought it would get them into Walmart 
)
Thanks for the book recommendation, I haven’t and it sounds like a good read. Put it on my ever-growing list …
I believe if you like RUSH its obligatory to have all their music - in many formats - & usually in triplicate, just in case 
I’m covered on this band Lerxxst - my Moving Pictures super Deluex should be delivered tomorrow which will keep me current on their releases 
Some albums represent a complete musical piece/story/journey, even if there are splits a bit like movements in a symphony. Those very much have a point, so albums are nothing to do with the times we live in. Of course people who have no interest in or engagement with the whole piece are at liberty to pick and select if they like individual tracks, which is a side benefit of online digital availability.
Yes, my 16 year old is trying something akin to that. I can’t wait for him to return to breadth rather than depth.
I must say I find the idea that people don’t see the point of albums entirely understandable but also possibly a sad loss. Nothing for me beats a well ordered 30 to 40 minute album - and there’s a whole other discussion to be had about the increasingly lost art of album sequencing - and I find even the best albums which exceed that to be exhausting without the energy of live performance.
Albums that are designed to be a sequential storey, I would certainly give more time to. But I am referring more towards the majority of releases from contemporary music that I buy.
I think people tend to forget that owning music is not the same as listening to music. And it’s not a case of picking and choosing tracks from an album, it’s a matter of understanding which tracks are strong and which are weak. Considering albums as a whole journey or making references to a symphony, I would suggest is a rather romantic notion, when quite often the majority of Albums tend to follow a more commercial path. In practice, this can often lead to a disjointed album, and with these Albums I find myself skipping tracks to hear a stronger track and never ever hearing the weaker tracks after the first or second listening attempt.
I do of course still but Albums, but often wonder what’s the point sometimes…without being too romantic about it.
I know what you are saying but in my view, this represents a change induced by how music is consumed which has in turn led to losing the art of album craft.
Crafting an album is an important part of the musical experience and the best artists still do it. I tend to feel like the artists that have lost this craft have actually declined (in my eyes) as musicians. Music is more than just playing a good song and when you get to 10 songs just chuck them together on an album. Might be fine for iTunes and radio play but it doesn’t fit into my listening pattern where I want the right album with the tracks in the right order to take me on an intentional journey.
To some degree this has always been an issue, but now it is rife. Artists going back as long as popular music has existed have had singles that existed outside their album canon specifically because they had enough album craft to realise “this might be great but it doesn’t fit with any of our albums”.
I completely agree with you Zen, but I am not the cause of this. I am from the older generation.
I am not saying that that’s how I want to listen to music, I am saying that is how my buying habits have changed over time mainly due to the reasons you point out.
I am also not sure that the consumption of music is necessarily the cause, that would be too easy, perhaps. Perhaps, the art or craft of Album making was in decline anyway, it would be very difficult to say either way.
I predominantly buy albums, and play them as albums - I would say that accounts for maybe something like 99% of my music playing. I only occasionally buy a single track, or play individual tracks from albums in isolation.
Music is romantic in itself…. I will admit that my view of albums cones primarily from prog rock being my favoured genre, with opera and classical also high up there, and a good proportion of the remainder of music I like having been assembled with, as @feeling_zen eliquently expresses it, good album craft, while not a lot of contemporary music excites me.
There was quite an interesting point by Mike a few posts up, regarding being “exhausted” listening to Albums. Although it may not be in the same context as mine below.
From a personal point of view, I do get fatigued when trying to listen to an Album when I am not interested in much of the tracks on that album, and I often feel that it’s wasting my time when I can skip to another track on the same Album that makes me feel good.
On a side note; I often wonder that the creative process of even writing the lyrics and music to one song, to make that one song special, would be difficult enough. If the artist felt he/she achieved that, would that negate the need for an Album? I certainly think so.
Of course, there is no such thing as the perfect track but surely an artist strives to make it at any point in their career. To try to make the perfect Album would seem to me, a much more futile endeavour.
Many artists work to make a living, while others do it for the enjoyment of making and playing music, and entertaining, and some hoping to hit the ‘big time’ and gain fame and fortune - or some combination of all of these. I suspect very few focus on creating perfect work (track or album), and if that were to be their primary aim, once achieved they would have set themselves up for future failure…
However, I think the word ‘perfect’ is the problem here - I suggest that many musicians do aim to make “good” or “great” albums, and indeed individual tracks. Whether they focus on the individual track or an album may depend on whether their aim is to get a ‘hit single’ as with I guess all ‘pop’ artists, or whether they prefer to create a deeper musical experience, which is what many prog bands aspire to.
In other cases of course the assembly of an album is driven by marketing, and artists can often be under pressure from record companies to produce sufficient music for an album. If the band isn’t sufficiently creative, that can certainly result in below-par tracks being included, which is a shame. Where albums I have had tracks like that, I have deleted the ones I don’t like - but they amount to a very small proportion of the music I have bought.
Only my opinion,but talk of either perfect tracks or albums is futile.After all,whose opinion would count as the ultimate decision. I’m sure I have in my collection albums I regard as perfect,to someone else they might be considered as rubbish.
Of course, I use the term ‘perfect’ loosely and I already said it would be futile. Besides, the arbiter of perfection would be the artist themselves.
My point being, that for a musical artist to achieve the best song composition they can achieve, for arguments sake, the perfect song composition, the creative energy needed for that would be enormous. To achieve the same level of achievement to compose an album with its elemental properties (could be up to twelve songs) would seem to me to be much more difficult. It would be reasonable to suggest that any given album would have its fare share of weak songs on it.
That’s not to say that the perfect album does not require to have twelve perfect songs on it, it may only need twelve mediocre songs to achieve its goal of telling the perfect storey. But this can’t be considered the norm as most albums don’t set out to tell a storey in its entirety.
Looking back at the development of albums historically, at the beginning of the commercial music industry or the recording industry, I suspect the album idea was merely a practical container for discreet songs, a device to sell the artists music, as a collection of music. The idea that the album should tell a storey probably came later.
I am not advocating songs over albums, but I am saying that my listening enjoyment is focussed on the song composition, not the album as the album tends to be a let down.
Going back to the OP, collecting back catalogues is not on my musical radar as it would require collecting a lot of duff songs and that’s not necessary to understand an artists creative journey, likewise albums.
There are multiple contradictions here. Some listeners saw the move from vinyl to CD as an expansion of their creative freedom. Some saw it as the decline of the art of concision and sequencing. Similarly some see the benefits of streaming and playlists in similar terms.
Regardless of format people have always skipped tracks on albums. One of many reasons the crate diggers and classic album Sunday type stuff makes me laugh. The idea that only vinyl encourages or enables a person to listen to a work all the way through is just romantic nonsense. That crackle between tracks 3 and 4 on side 1 is there because someone hated track and dropped the needle on track 4. I skipped lousy tracks on vinyl, probably did so less on CD and I’m probably about the same with streaming. Some people buy everything and listen to everything. Some just don’t.
It is absolutely a romanticised view but, for me, nothing beat a 45rpm single and nothing beats a 35 to 40 minute album with no filler. I have lots of 60 minute plus CDs etc. but few I would listen to end to end after the first listen. There tends to be filler and over expansion and stuff becomes exhausting and/or loses impact.
Lke many others I went through a period of wanting expanded versions etc. one of the joys of streaming is editing such stuff out. My period of wanting insight into the creative process is long since over. I just want the peaks of what was created. Of course there are exceptions - The Dylan Bootleg Series springs to mind - but even there the single or double CD versions are often vastly more focused and enjoyable than the 10 CD versions.