Attention Span
I've noticed a recurring joke on the Simpsons (at least in the third and fourth seasons which I have on DVD) that Bart and Lisa have attention span and memory problems due to watching too much TV. I think the same thing is happening with the iPod and iTunes. Shuffle is the rage now. Apple even has an "iPod" that basically just does shuffle play. Now shuffle has it's uses. It kinda feels like you have your own radio station, and it's probably a great thing for parties (not that I know). But I start to wonder if people can just listen to an album straight through anymore. We need our ever changing burst of 4 minute songs. It's too boring to listen to the whole album as it was intended by the artist (of course I'm assuming that most of the album is worth listening to). Good luck actually having the attention span to listening to something like Beethoven's ninth symphony (which usually runs about an hour).
I recently bought a bookshelf stero system. The past couple years I've listened to music off of my iBook or iPod. Besides the fact the stero system sounds much better, it's been great listening to CDs as a whole. It's actually kinda surprising what I miss with iTunes/iPod playing on shuffle. I also just recently got the ultimate listen straigth through album: Pink Floyd's
Dark Side of the Moon. It's great, straight through with no pauses between songs because iTunes/iPod doesn't have gapless playback.
