365 – New Music Daily

I know. A long form, personalized editorial recapping my music taste is just fascinating. But hey, here we are. And the narcissism doesn’t die there. I’m going to pat myself on the back for actually listening to 365 (366! Damn Mavy..) albums in the year. I barely made it. The album page isn’t updated. The blogs got really short. I know. Still counts.

Let’s go through a few quick pros and cons of this approach to listening to music.

Obvious pro 1 – I was able to greatly expand my music taste. Many of my favorite albums of the year were from groups that I had never listened to before. I now listen to Alternative Rock far more than any other genre, regardless of if my Spotify Wrapped said it was still rap (no way). I will continue to do this, for the sake of taste expansion, listening to a new exciting artist, or taking further steps into my full fledged role of music snob.

Pro 2 – as much as my sometimes seen lack of output may not show it, I very much enjoyed writing these blogs. Remind me to come back to that thought.

Con 1 – I didn’t feel like I always had the opportunity to let albums sink in or grow on me, which I often thought about even while listening to the albums. A great example of this (or at least, the first one off the top of my head as I type this) is Physical Graffiti by Zeppelin. That’s an album that definitely deserves more than one listen, and one that probably would’ve grown on me if I gave it more of a shot. Arguably the biggest issue with this, as well as playlist listening and the modern model of music consumption, but that’s something for another day.

Con 2 – At some point, and this is my own doing, the blog and listening started to feel cumbersome, and I was reluctant to continue to listen to new albums. There’s a plethora of reasons for this – how much time I have in my day, the above point & wanting to listen to songs that I had found and really enjoyed, how much time I look at a screen daily, and more. Again, given how much I enjoy writing, even if it’s for 5 of you (which, by the way, thank you so much for reading. It’s a major part on why I even finished writing the blog. Over 325 people checked out the blog, with 2300+ views. An extra thank you to everyone who found there way here. But the biggest is to the people that were here for damn near every post! If it was really just for me, I probably would’ve been much lazier. Thank you thank you thank you! Anyways..), I want to continue to produce something like this.

So… what’s next? It’s 2024. I have definitely listened to two new albums today, but the goal won’t be the same. If I listen to 365 new albums again, you’ll be sure to know about it. But, I will definitely be listening to new albums, new music, and will continue to share those on this blog. One a day? Maybe. Many new ones a month? Definitely. If you want me to listen to something, let me know.

I’m also going to work on some longer form, deep dives on stuff I really like. But more importantly, end of year lists are soon to come.