"Well, yes. I remember the songs. I couldn't tell you what the sequence was. I would have listened to octopus garden and said " hmm, not bad, kind of quirky" I would then have listened to whatever was next.
At the end, I would remember the great songs, and mostly forget the not so great.
It would not have affected my opinion of Abbey Road in the slightest. I know that, because I couldn't tell you the song sequence right now. "


I think you're pretending to be some kind of Vulcan right now, Dave. It was 1969, and if you bought it when it came out, I suspect that you'd definitely remember at least how each side started and ended.

Side one: Come Together

Side two: Here Comes the Sun

How it ended: with the song called THE END--and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make...

I don't think it would have been so iconic if that track appeared third on the album, but maybe that is just me.

Well, I guess you aren't the target audience for this question as you normally buy individual tracks over CDs anyway. But I do have one final question for you:

"I wouldn't just listen to the first 2 tracks."

What if the first track you listened to online was truly lame (again, I will use Octopuses' Garden as my example)? Would you necessarily listen to a second track?

The argument can be made that people *can* start listening in the middle, but I think human nature is still somewhat intact and the majority of people, when looking at 12 mp3 samples, will probably opt to start at track one.

But again, this isn't about how to sell more CDs in pop's case--it is what is the best listening experience for the buyer after he or she buys? To say that most who buy his CD will put it into their player and hit 'random' doesn't feel accurate--why would they?

I think it is more traditional that they will hit 'play.' Just my take on the world.

Different strokes for different folks, but I think for the foreseeable future I will continue to view my albums, to create my albums, with a cinematic model in mind: they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And maybe even some kind of story gets told...

But that's the value of letting someone impartial tell you the way they think it should be sequenced.

And here is the beautiful part! If you don't agree, it usually forces you into making a decision and suddenly you realize that yes, you did have an opinion after all. It's like the technique of flipping a coin when you have a really tough decision to make. You flip the coin, and you look at which side is up… And then you ask yourself how you feel about that decision that was just made for you. If you feel good about it, go with it. If not, then you just saved yourself from making the wrong decision.

"What I am looking for in a cd may not be what the musician was looking for. In other words, the musician may love the 1st track, and I may hate it. At that point, game over anyway."

I would like to thank you for the absolutely perfect set up for the following comments.

If I, the artist, put what I think is my best work at the beginning, and you hate it, I don't think it's very likely that you're going to be happy with my other tracks either. I'm pretty versatile, but it's unlikely the opening track is going to sound like a Whole Lotta Love, and the next track will be a New Age synth fantasy.

Most of us aren't well-known enough for someone to compelled to listen to more than few seconds after 1 disappointing track. So I think it behooves us to put whatever we feel is the strongest material as the opening set of songs.
That way, even if we lose, we've been rejected on the basis of our very best work, as opposed to something we felt wasn't as representative of our True Vision.

Different strokes for different folks, but I think for the foreseeable future I will continue to view my albums, to create my albums, with a cinematic model in mind: they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And maybe even some kind of story gets told...

Oh, and pop-

It's very likely that you do have stronger and weaker material on your album, but you're too close to it to recognize.

Tell you what--if you ever did an album yourself, these issues would probably speak to you a bit more. Don't you think so?

By the way--I hate to share this trade secret with you, as I might be breaking some kind of dark marketing code, but consumers almost never think they have been influenced by the things that have definitely influenced their decisions. It's like the guy who is hypnotized to swat at an imaginary fly on his nose over and over--he thinks he's doing it because there is a fly, but that isn't the case at all.

When I am working on a cd, I often play it on a random playlist, and I notice how songs work one into the other, and I find certain songs will be great bumped against each other that way.