I guess there's people who collect music and then there's others who listen to the records they collect.
Call me weird, but I'd feel ashamed to get a record and never listen to it. All of the 34,000+ songs in my music library has graced my ears at least once.
If that "at least once" was actually "just once" for most of then, then you're not that different from those other people then, as songs as meant for multiple listens. A cursory single listen (and perhaps while doing something else at the time too, or with skipping forward) it's not much different than no listen at all.
Most music is worth exactly one listen. You can tell right away if you're going to need to hear it again.
What any object is "meant for" shouldn't dictate how you use it.
Ours obviously. Only trivial pop can be dismissed (or ear-worm its way) on a single listen. And the best works, the ones with the most depth, take multiple listenings to even begin to fully appreciate.
One might not care about all this, and drop stuff they bought/downloaded to listen summarily in one listening. It's a free country, and nobody says they should be forced to do otherwise.
But then -- and that's my argument, that person is not that different than people amassing tons of music and not hearing most of it even once. They might be slightly more involved, but not much more.
>What any object is "meant for" shouldn't dictate how you use it
Well, that's one viewpoint, a modern consumerist, where it's all about the individual and their whims, where their taste, consumption habits, and choices shouldn't be questioned.
I opt for another, older viewpoint, where the individual should raise themselves to appreciate culture (music, books, movies, etc) and their choices can always be questioned and improved, and they can (and should) always strive to be better educated on them. In other words, a master work of art, does very much dictate how people use it, and if they're ever gonna get it, they should follow that path.
But on subsequent listenings you start to notice things, things become familiar and you start liking it. And the crazy thing is that a lot of the time those albums (or artists) are the ones that get catapulted into "best album of all time" statuses.
Definitely some of my top artists/albums of all time are ones that did not appeal to me on the first few listens.
Before, I was the quintessential hoarder, I bought CDs, bought albums on Bandcamp and torrented a ton of music. Why only get one album, when you can get the whole discography?
On Spotify, because everything is just available right there with basically no effort, I don't have to find and collect anything. I just listen to the music, and click "save" on the songs I like. The daily mixes help me listen to those same songs again, or I just put all of my saved songs on shuffle.
I'll also save favorite albums as playlists, and I've listened to those a whole lot more than when I was listening to locally-stored MP3s.
I do have a "albums to check out" list still, but it's significantly smaller than what I used to have.
I get what you are saying though.