Would people rather enjoy listening to an already compiled playlist of one’s favorite songs or listen to their favorite albums straight down? This is a debated topic within the community of music lovers. 

Some enjoy the mixture curated for themselves but others enjoy listening to an entire album start to finish. Junior Joanna Garcia prefers playlists over albums because, “There’s usually more of a variety.” Adding variety into the music that’s curated for each individual is important to Garcia. Including different genres doesn’t put you in a bore and adds more surprises to each individual’s music experience. This can also be a variety of emotions the songs are portraying. When you are playing an album it can switch to sad to happy songs instantly and to maintain that balance many people create strictly sad or happy playlists.

Similarly, Junior Katherine Luo prefers playlists to albums because, “A playlist is more personal.” Playlists are curated by one’s interest with their favorite songs while an album is curated by an artist based on their own feelings. While you may not feel the same emotions as a song on an album you can definitely feel an emotion on the same album. Luo creates playlists and organizes them by mood or the particular feeling that that particular song gives her. This helps her music listening experience become better in general. 

Both of them do not own physical copies of music but when asking Ayala Parent Chaitanya Kantayapalam, she says that she loves “creating CD’s of my favorite songs but I do enjoy albums more.” She loves listening to albums because of how cohesive the sound is. She explains the thought process behind an album versus a playlist and how an album can be more calming for her because it all has one sound and with a playlist there are multiple sounds which are not cohesive. 

Albums, playlists, vinyl, cassettes, CD’s it all comes down to one’s personal opinions and how people would enjoy their musical experience. Regardless of people’s musical preferences, the medium in which others enjoy music can affect their experiences.