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Comment by tacocataco | Hacker News Reader

One thing about vinyl that I've noticed is that you don't have a play list, you listen to the whole album. No one puts on a vinyl record to play one song.

I used to have a huge folder where I dumped all my music files and I would have them play at random. When I streamed online, I would have a play list or pick one song at a time.

Lately I've been going through some of my favorite arists and listening to each of their albums in chronological order.

Listening to the entire album as the artist intended is just a little different and it's how I play music for myself now. Perhaps people like vinyl because it encourages listening to the entire album in one sitting.

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No one puts on a vinyl record to play one song.

Pretty much every DJ out there begs to differ :) I get your point though, and do also like to listen to whole albums (be it on vinyl or cd or PC), sometimes. Other times I prefer to create the playlist on the spot in function of my mood, i.e. select one track after the other. 'DJ' if you will, except I don't usually do proper mixing as that can take away part of the 'just listening' experience.

One nit. When I listened to vinyl in school it was actually very common for many people to prefer a specific side of an album. (And you're right, you almost always listened to at least that side from start to finish.) If you wanted to mix things up more, you made a mix tape.

ADDED: There were 45rpm singles (typically A and B side) too of course but those were pretty uncommon by the time I was an undergrad. When CDs came in people mostly listened to the whole album as was also the case with cassettes.

Foobar2000 lists my music per album. So I double click and put on an album.

In Spotify I do the same, I favorite artists or albums, and I put on an album. Thanks to Adele[1] I get the album played in order.

That said, I agree there's something special about putting on a record, sitting down and just listening to an album. Especially albums where it's clear the artist/band has had some thought behind the album structure.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59365019

Can foobar2000 play 1 album in cycle?

Playback -> Order -> Repeat (playlist). Then it will repeat the playlist.

I also have the Media Library -> Album List -> Double-click Action set to "Send to Current Playlist", so that double-clicking on an album replaces the playlist with the album.

Coupled it would play the album on repeat until I double-click on a new album.

you can make a playlist with that album and out it on repeat?

This is not handy if I almost always want to listen music as albums but I have bunches of mp3 files.

it turns out that there is shuffle album mode (I vaguely remembered it but wasn't certain)

Well that's the same mindset when listening to casettes, yes? Except choosing a specific track on vinyl is a bit tougher: you have to move the needle to certain position...

Choosing a specific track is easier on vinyl than cassette, not tougher; there are often visual cues, and you can seek in constant time rather than linear. It takes a steady hand to be sure, but I'll take it any day over fast forwarding / rewinding some arbitrary amount, hunting for the start by sound...

(There are cassette players that can stop winding when they detect silence, and that helps, but they fail on albums with gapless mixing. Admittedly such albums are also difficult to seek by sight on vinyl. On the other hand, there are vinyl players with motorized arms that obviate the need for a steady hand, at the cost of introducing a linear term in seek time, albeit still faster than cassettes.)

Cassette is more difficult, but I will say from experience that after enough time with a specific player (a walkman for example) and a tape you could get uncannily good at seeking to the start/end of a specific track.

Skipping tracks on vinyl is super easy, especially compared to fast-forward or rewind on casette.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF5toXl3H3c

Someone else posted video of a DJ, but to emphasize, home listeners select tracks on a vinyl record easily, it’s not a DJ trick. The songs are often marked, dropping the needle in the marked groove selects the start of the song. You’ve got a cue lever that lets you align the arm first then drop, but even without one you can hit the beginning of the track with your hand easily (I broke my cue lever 15 years ago and rarely think about fixing it)

So the premise of this whole thread that it is hard to select songs and this is a difference of vinyl records is kinda just made up. I select songs all the time.

You do have to stand up though, no remote or phone app to do it.

Excellent point! So how tough to program a playlist to play sets of three by artists...

>No one puts on a vinyl record to play one song.

Uh, ever heard of a DJ?

That's clearly a specific case that they weren't talking about.

Separately, when people say "nobody does this" they aren't literally saying 0.0000% of people.

It's perfectly ok to say "nobody commutes by helicopter". It isn't a clever riposte to say "aha but Jeff Bezos...".

It's not that unusual at all though.

For a long period in the 90s and early 00s the main purchasers of vinyl records were DJs specifically just to mix one track at a time.

I even have some single sided pressings with exactly one track on one side.

Back then if you knew someone regularly buying new vinyl 9/10 times they were a DJ.

Right but it's very clear from the context that they were talking about normal listeners, not DJs.

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