Earlier this week NPR Music was asking people what their musical resolutions were for 2014. At first I didn’t really think I had any. I mean I would have loved to say go to more live shows, but that’s not really a realistic goal unless I plan to drive to DC by myself a whole lot. (Baltimore get your act together and book more of the bands I want to see instead of letting them all go to Philly and DC). Then later in the week I was thinking that I really needed to start listening to the albums I’ve purchased more, and I was like oh I guess I do have a musical goal for the year after all.

Even in this day and age I’m pretty good at buying whole albums in order to support the artists I love so they can keep making new music. In fact now that Spotify exists I am more inclined to purchase whole albums rather than singles. If there are singles that exist where I’m not interested in the whole album I tend to just listen to them on Spotify instead of buying the single. Either that or the singles I listen to are ones I’ve gotten for free somewhere (yes legally). I have a rule for myself that if I listen to an entire album on Spotify at least 3 times then I should go ahead and buy it.

Even though I tend to purchase albums over singles I don’t tend to listen to my music that way. I throw it up on shuffle most of the time and thus rarely get the experience of listening to an entire album. Often this is happening at the gym or in the car and when the songs are on shuffle I tend to skip past the songs I don’t know thus leading to never actually knowing them and continually perpetuating the problem. Long gone are the days when I have time to sit down and really devote myself to listening to an entire album while doing nothing else at the same time, so I just don’t learn all the songs on an album like I used to.

I usually listen to music most days at work, so I decided I wanted to start listening to at least one album every morning instead of immediately coming in and streaming WXPN. So far I’m enjoying delving into the music I own, and I look forward to making more musical discoveries even within my own music collection.