You buy an album, having liked two or three of the singles. The first play of the album is underwhelming, but not terrible. How many plays do you tend to give the album in an attempt to have it grow on you?

Are you someone who gives up right away, and heads straight for ebay/Amazon resale, or do you keep listening until you bloody well like it or else?

I suspect one's patience or persistence declines in direct proportion to one's age and therefore the size of one's record collection.

When I was a teenager and only had about 40 albums, I'd play them over and over even if I wasn't particularly growing to like them. These days (although it's partly a side-effect of my job) there are even albums I love at first hearing that I never get around to giving another spin, so the less-than-instant ones stand next-to-no chance.

Unless it's a band I already really love, and I'll give them a couple of chances...

It's a pity really because the albums that usually end up blowing your mind and becoming a source of reflection for the rest of your life are usually those ones which require an element of effort from the listener. Catchy albums, instantly great as they are, usually fall from conciousness after 15 to 20 plays in my experience.

i consciously limit myself to only buying two cds/lps at a time, because i went through a phase of buying handfuls of stuff i never got around to listening to at all.

I quite diligently try to play albums twice, marking the tracks I'll keep and the tracks I'll delete as I go.

Sometimes it's just the once if it's something I really don't like as I'm listening to it, nore complex stuff might take 4 or 5 listens to get a good understanding of it. For example the new album by The New Year was like that for me this week.

I hardly ever get rid of them, so sometimes I end up getting into something years after I bought it.

Once - maybe twice. If something hasn't got the tunes or atmosphere, then it's probably never going to grab me. A good example would be Royksopp's 'Melody A.M.' - the first time I played it I found it really bland. I haven't played it since.

I think I'm going to start a parallel thread for 'albums you took a while to get into' or something, just so this one doesn't get derailed.

If it's clearly crap, then once or maybe twice. If it makes no real impression, but it's an artiste you generally like or were coaxed by a friend or a crit into thinking you'd really like, then I'd say at least 10. It still hasn't worked with Cat Power's 'Greatest', though I periodically keep trying it again. Funnily enough, a couple of tracks off Morrissey's 'SouthPaw Grammar' have come up on the iPod recently and sounded just fine - SG being the universally reviled album that I always suspected couldn't be as bad as I remembered and which now, some 13 odd years after release, is maybe going to prove that some works need time. Though I'll reserve judgment until I've listened to the whole thing again.

I'll keep playing an album for as long as it gets better with each listen. If I like it more than I did the last time, it's worth hearing again.

Quite often I've not played a cd at all, having changed my opinion on the artiste on the way home from buying it.

I'm terribly fickle like that.

QUOTE:
It still hasn't worked with Cat Power's 'Greatest', though I periodically keep trying it again.

Ah, good, I'm not the only one. I also keep trying it again once in a while, because there must be something in so well-received an album in a genre I love. And yet, it just doesn't click for me. I don't dislike it, but I can't be enthused over it. And, of course, if I am in a mood for that kind of music, there are dozens of albums which I do love which I can play instead. I suppose that this pretty much applies to imp – a fellow fan of the female "singer-songwriter" (ugh!) genre – as well.

Agree with steveeee. Usually though the "growers" will show just a little bit of appeal that keeps them from being completely uninteresting, so breaking them in is not a huge chore.