Why can I listen to radio for hours but when I listen to music I actually like I feel exhausted after 1 or 2 albums?

FelipeFelop , 10 months ago

There’s lots of reasons including psychology.

When you listen to Radio you generally don’t know what songs will be played unless the DJ teases what’s coming. When they tease it’s always something that the vast majority will like.

So with radio you have the anticipation factor which helps bridge the advert gap (if the station plays adverts in between tracks)

When you listen to radio you are often distracted or doing something else.

If you put in an album then you now exactly what order the tracks will be and unless you skip tracks will inevitably have some that are fillers. Also, you are more likely to concentrate on the music which involves more thinking. All of this leads to boredom or fatigue.

ghost , 10 months ago

There’s a few things at play:

• Radio stations tend to play “radio edits” which are usually versions of a song that may have a bridge or section of the song removed or shortened to fit play length requirements
• Radio stations have commercial breaks which break up blocks of music and provide your brain with a different “variety” of sound (voices/speech) as opposed to a CD or playlist that plays music with no breaks
• Similarly, radio stations typically have a host or DJ who will announce song names/info between tracks playing, giving your brain a brief break between songs.

ghost , 10 months ago

Also: some radio stations do play songs slightly faster than their album versions play, which cab shorten a song by a handful of seconds. This allows them to cram in those announcer breaks between songs or potentially play additional ads.

I think this is less common now than it used to be though.