Why don’t we listen to albums anymore?

A recent study found that many British adults have never listened to an LP in full. Alice Austin explores why albums help us connect with an artist, and what we lose if we stop listening all the way through.

I came across a sobering study the other day. It said that 8% of UK adults have never listened to an album from start to finish, while 41% haven’t listened to a full album in the last year. Conducted by National Rail as part of the “Track Reset” campaign with Pete Tong, the poll collected data from 2,000 people.

It’s not as though these same people aren’t consuming music. 70% said they listen to the same tracks on repeat, playing their favourite songs an average of 343 times over 12 months. That’s almost once every day of the year.

This data shouldn’t come as a surprise. Spotify is by far the most popular streaming platform in the UK and it’s hardly designed for album listening. Only 38% of Spotify users pay for the premium service, meaning tracks are on perpetual shuffle and constantly interrupted by ads, making it very hard to listen to a full body of work. 

Even the people who do pay for Spotify Premium are manoeuvred towards playlists, which offer convenience, supposed mood-matching and background music. All you have to do is type in “dinner party” or “workout” and an endless litany of nameless music appears at your fingertips. It requires zero effort or decision making. In this environment, it takes active research and dedicated time to truly carve out your own music taste. 

Things looked very different pre-Spotify. There was no algorithm feeding us a constant stream of inoffensive music. Personal taste was discovered, nurtured, and developed. And for me, it was a joy. 

The first album that knocked me sideways was Shenanigans, Green Day’s underrated album. It came out in 2002 and was full of B-sides, rarities, and covers instead of stand-out singles. For whatever reason, it was the record that rocketed me into adolescence. 

I had favourite songs, but I had this rule that I had to wait for them to come around. Perhaps part of me understood that if I played them over and over, the magic would wear off quicker. Or perhaps, somehow, my 12-year-old brain inherently understood that part of the allure came from a track’s place among the others. Albums are like a book. They have themes, consistencies, motifs, and the order in which they’re recorded means something, like chapters. You wouldn’t start reading a book from chapter six. 

The first track is often something of a mood setter, a hook designed to draw you in and invite you to stick around. The second and third tracks are often described as the “prime real estate,” reserved for hits and singles. “Breathe” from The Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land (1997), “Aerodynamic” from Daft Punk’s Discovery (2001), and “Praise You” from Fatboy Slim’s You've Come a Long Way, Baby (1998) all landed at two or three on the tracklist. 

I’ve always discovered my favourite tracks somewhere between four and 12. It’s here you develop a deeper connection to the artist; where you learn more about who’s singing to you and what they’re singing about. This is the scaffolding of the album, where true fandom unfurls. 

In the Spotify era, the way we consume music has been flipped on its head, and artists have had no choice but to follow suit. The streaming charts are awash with two-minute singles with TikTok-friendly choruses, while slow listening and quiet digesting feels increasingly rare. 

But, ever the optimist, I believe the pendulum will start to swing the other way. Vinyl sales are at their highest in nineteen years, album listening parties have skyrocketed in popularity, and not long ago, in London, I visited 180 Studios’ gorgeous Listening Room, with horn-loaded speakers and vacuum-tube amplification. It’s based on Devon Turnbull’s philosophy that the system, the room, and the listener should work together to make recorded music feel physical and immersive. Listening to music in that room is like the antithesis to the algorithm.

The truth is, to develop our own taste takes initiative and curiosity. But I’m hopeful that people will return to the album. In a world that’s becoming evermore shortform, we’ll remember that listening to an album from beginning to end is one of life’s great pleasures. It’s a season of an artist’s life. A snapshot into their psyches, and often our own, too. An album is one of the greatest connectors, and the only way the algorithm can take that away is if we let it.