an album a week...

it's been a little over a year since i stopped using spotify¹.

of course, this has been an overwhelmingly positive thing for me. i don't have to bear the weight on my conscience of using that life-sucking souless fucking service, and the money i used to throw at it can now be occasionally thrown directly at the artists i already enjoy! on the other hand, it has meant that the process of listening to music takes a bit more effort now.

for the most part, it's not a big deal at all. though i have noticed that the things that i used to be able to do with a single tap have now become a multi-step process (1 hitting like on a song to save it vs 1 download the music, 2 organize the files, 3 put them into musicbee, 4 add lyrics and adjust volume, 5 transfer into phone) after i got into the groove of it i barely think about it. my main problem with this whole thing, i think, is going out of my way to listen to new music.

when i had spotify i used to do this by listening to their automatically generated "discover weekly" playlists. did this actually lead me to finding new things i liked often? Not really! while there are a good handful of songs that i've come to really love that originally came from discovery playlists, most of the stuff it threw at me was at best forgettable and at worst just straight up bad². but the thing is that even when it was forcing me to listen to shit straight from a butt, it was allowing me to listen to new things, you know? new songs, new artists. generally the same genres i already listened to because that's how this whole thing works, but my horizons were being slightly broadened whether i liked the view or not.

i haven't stopped finding or listening to new music just because i no longer have access to an automatically generated "discovery" playlist, obviously, but i do feel like i haven't been listening to new music as much, or enough. listening to new music requires me to scour around for it myself, and while results are largely more successful than having a dumb robot that's being actively bribed and manipulated assemble a list for me, the effort i have to put into the task is not something i always feel like doing. which has lead to this exact moment in time where i: have not listened to anything actually new in what feels like MONTHS.

i can't keep living like this, man!!

i feel very strongly that music is and has always been one of my main driving forces of artistic inspiration, so i can't help but associate my lack of ideas for art with the fact that i haven't been listening to anything other than the same old songs over and over again. i need a change! i need to listen to new things, and i need to do that NOW!!

waiting around for the urge to listen to anything new to hit me just isn't working out anymore! i have to do something about it!!

so what i've come up with is this: in order to encourage myself to keep listening to new things, i'm going to start a project, of sorts. i'm going to be listening to a new (to me) album every week, and writing down whatever thoughts i have about it on a page on this very website.

i've assembled a list of albums i'd like to try out, sourcing some from my own purview— albums i haven't listened to by artists i already like, albums by artists who i haven't heard of before but want to start listening to, albums that i glanced at and thought looked cool— and some from recommendations given to me by other people³. a lot of it seems to be in genres i'm already a fan of, but i'm also really interested in trying out new things, even if i don't end up particularly liking them.

i don't have any real rules for this endeavour, other than "listen to a new album every week" and "record thoughts down on a page to keep self accountable". ideally i'll try to listen to each album all the way through at least twice, but hopefully more… i know sometimes songs take a few listens to truly hit. ⁴

all that said, you can check out the page here!

i've already kicked off the page with an album that i'd had sitting around in my folders completely unlistened for the past two weeks, which is, in my opinion, already a Good Start! for future weeks i'm planning on just picking out random albums from the list i put together, maybe even put them all in a wheel or something for some added spice. i'll update the page whenever i feel i have formed an opinion on the album i picked that week, and hopefully keep it going until i, uh, can't anymore. i guess. all we have is hope.

on the offchance anyone is actually reading this: i'd love it if you recommended me an album yourself in the comments below! be it your favourite or just something you'd like to inflict upon me, i'll take anything. i won't promise i'll like it if i get around to it, but i'll be more than happy to have tried something new.

wish me luck!!

see ya!

1. ^ if you're looking into making the switch yourself, i made a post on tumblr around the time with some resources. it's rudimentary but it might be a good place to start...? people chimed in with more stuff in the comments too, if you'd like to look in there.
2. ^ the worst one i've ever heard was a song that sounded fucking terrible and included the lyrics "so i feed him / yummy / human body parts / for his little wittle tummy wummy".
3. ^ from friends, from forums/reddit threads when i looked up specific genres i wanted to listen more of, and from random people on the grundos.cafe neoboards. because if i can count on anyone to come to my aid it's people who still play neopets in 2026.
4. ^ i say this while also being extremely guilty of only listening to albums all the way through Once, picking out the songs i like from that single listenthrough, and just moving on with my life and not thinking about it again. i would really like to change my ways.

if you'd like to send an album for me to potentially listen to, please do so here!

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