Since my wife bought me my first in iPod in 2003, my music listening patterns could a) be better described and b) highly focused on new music.
I looked at the average listens by decade to prove this out in more detail:
- 2010s: 18.39 minutes per song (965 hours spent listening to music in 2010s) – still too new, but will likely pass 2000s
- 2000s: 25.52 minutes per song (3882 hours spent listening to music in 2000s)
- 1990s: 17.43 minutes per song (1875 hours spent listening to music in 1990s) – impressive since all this music would be old at time of data collection
- 1980s: 9.19 minutes per song (149 hours spent listening to music in 1980s)
- 1970s: 8.87 minutes per song (42 hours spent listening to music in 1970s)
- 1960s: 9.64 minutes per song (32 hours spent listening to music in 1960s)
So, picking favorite albums from decades earlier than 1990s is highly influenced by what I still listen to (not necessarily what I loved at the time). Anyway, I was curious what my favorite albums from the 80s were and here they are:
1. REM’s Life Rich Pageant (Capitol Records) – 1986 – 8.302
2. Shrimp Boat’s Speckly (Aum Fidelity) – 1989 – 8.259
3. Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs (Island Records) – 1985 – 7.781
4. REM’s Dead Letter Office (IRS Records) – 1987 – 7.864
5. The Smiths’ Louder the Bombs (Sire Records) – 1987 – 7.775
6. Pixies’ Doolittle (4AD) – 1989 – 7.774
7. Pixies Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim (4AD) – 1988 – 7.530
8. Camper Van Beethoven’s Telephone Free Landslide Victory (Cooking Vinyl) – 1985 – 7.522
9. Fugazi’s 13 Songs (Dischord Records) – 1988 – 7.491
10. The Minutemen’s Double Nickles on the Dime (SST) – 1989 – 7.479
