Finally paying for Spotify so I can use it on my phone and offline, and rather than suffer the paralysis of choice, I’ve decided only to download about 10 albums for listening to on the way to work etc. How would you choose 10 albums - classics you can dip into whenever? New stuff you want to explore? A deep dive on one artist?
And what would your current 10 albums be?
I started out doing this, but now I download playlists. If I were to do it again, I would pick a choice. Maybe 5 new and 5 you love. Problem is if you’re not instantly getting on with the new, you’ll revert to the ones you love for instant gratification, and not give the new a decent chance.
My methodology changes every couple of months to keep things fresh. If it’s a good month for new releases it will be mostly new stuff with a couple of classics if I fancy something more familiar.
Towards the end of last year I did deep dives on specific artists I was obsessed with - Dolly Parton, Minutemen, Kriss Kristofferson etc.
At the moment I’m using that book 1001 albums you must hear and picking a mixture of stuff I know and like with stuff I haven’t heard before- 2 albums in a random year each from the 70’s, 80’so and 90’s.
I’d pick three or four new ones I wanted to listen to and stick to them for a couple of weeks. Ten still seems like a lot of choice.
In fact, I have precisely three albums on the go at the moment: Priests, Jens Lekman and that English Weather comp
I use the sub-folder thing in Spotify, and sort albums in to years they were released for playlists. I also do the same with singles, in to the years they came out. Also have sub-folders for moods and genres. I then just pick a couple at the start of the week and download them, although rather annoyingly my old iPhone 5 is now just about full, so I can only download one playlist.
rotate mine quite a lot. Always have some stuff to run to, some new stuff and some all-timers of various genres.
I just make a load of playlists. Albums are for white middle class male rockists.
I agree with this - just make sure you have a decent data allowance on your phone. I get a 3G signal nearly everywhere, even in darkest Aberdeenshire, and it’s pretty good at buffering too so, even if you hit a blackspot, you rarely loose your music if you don’t skip too much.
Isn’t the idea of paying for spotify that you no longer need a data allowance? Or have I been wolfcastled here?
Idk but the way I’m using it is just to download stuff for offline listening when I’m on wifi then have it set not to connect to 3G.
Yeah, you can download as much as you like from Spotify. But if your phone contract only allows, say, 1GB a month then you would soon hit that limit. If you’ve a high limit / unlimited amount of data then you can stay connected all the time and won’t need to download.
Just download it at home/in the office.
I mostly make playlists of artists, and have them on for a few days at a time. I also make a playlist every month of stuff I’ve been listening to - new and old. It’s great for looking back.
An album is just a playlist someone already spent loads of time getting perfect. 
call me a white middle class male rockist, but I’m not really a fan of playlists
I like mixes though. compilations are good as well. but playlists, good god no
Ah, OK.
I’m concerned you don’t understand how mobile data works now. Or maybe I’m the one being wolfcastled.
I think JohnM is saying you can download albums/playlists (if you’re not a white middle class male rockist) while connected to wifi and then listen in offline mode when not connected to wifi thus not needing to use any of your data allowance.
Or are you saying everyone has unlimted data allowances now?
I guess so. He’s worded it oddly, though (hence the replies he got).
No he hasn’t, it makes perfect sense.