albums: are they overrated?

Weirdly enough, having the technology to listen to a whole bunch of albums is actually making me more likely to listen to albums. I used to just download individual tracks (or, to be more exact, ask my brother to download them for me because I am a luddite), or buy them from itunes, and so it was cheaper and easier to just put a bunch of individual tracks on my ipod and make playlists or hit shuffle.

I finally got Spotify a little over a year ago, and it feels like such a luxury to just be able to listen to albums all the way through, the way I did when I was a kid. It's so much richer and more immersive, I have a context for what I'm hearing, I have more to think about because of the way the songs interact with each other, and I'm not as likely to burn myself out on individual songs. I still make playlists, but I would say that at least 70% of the time I'm listening to albums.