On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm curious. How many of you listen to music as a single-tasking > activity? Or at least, the primary foreground activity? And what > differentiates that from other modes of listening to music? > > Udhay
I often listen to a lot of music both in the foreground and background. I often listen to trance, chillout, lounge, electronic and instrumental music in the background (when I am coding, writing designs, updating documentation, writing mails etc). Typically such music tends to have less lyrics and more rhythms driven sounds. When in the foreground, I would typically listen to classic rock, Pop and world music. These typically have more lyrics and are poetry emotion driven rather than the sounds. So in the background category you would typically have Paul van Dyk, Sigur Ros, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Thievery Corporation, Air or Moby. In the foreground category, I would typically have Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Sarah McLachlan or Fleetwood Mac. Another difference is that I typically "sample" a new album in background mode a few times and then eventually the songs that I like make it into the foreground mode. -- Vinayak ps: You can see my music listening history at last.fm - http://www.last.fm/user/vinayakhegde (and add me if you are on it). It does make quite good recommendations and I have discovered quite a few obscure artist from my friends and last.fm recommendations.
