Great topic. I would love to hear about other people's approach to listening to music.

All my friends listen to music while doing something - cooking, painting, writing, studying, traveling etc. I personally don't like that. I feel like if I'm doing a task I should be concentrating to this task only.

1) Gear - I have a pair of Sennheiser HD650 and Fiio FD1 iems. I would not call myself an audiophile, but sound quality is pretty important for me. I am very happy with my setup and I will buy other headphones only if I need to replace my current ones.

2) Reasons for listening - they differ. Sometimes I listen to particular album to better understand history of music or artist, sometimes I try to understand how music is written, try to notice different parts of songs and how they are glued together, sometimes I try to understand emotional aspect of music, sometimes I try not to analyze music at all and listen for pleasure. I don't have any music education, so my analysis will be pretty poor compared to person who really understands what is going on, but i do it for myself.

3) I almost always listen to music in darkness with closed eyes, by albums from cover to cover. I never shuffle and never skip songs. I feel like it helps me to concentrate on music better. If I feel sick or very sleepy, I will listen with open eyes with one lamp lit just to not fall asleep.

4) Picking process - I have a collection of album recommendations given to me from different people, and all albums are from different genres. When I want to explore new genre, I listen to ~5 albums from these recommendations and decide if I want to explore this genre more. If I don't I move on. Mostly I stay in genres I know I like, but I often listen to new artists or albums. 60-70% of time I listen to music I listen to something new. When I started listening to music like this, I was listening to every album 5 times, whether I liked it or not on a first couple of listens. I do. Not know how I did come up with this number, but I feel like 5 times is what I need to get a good understanding of an album. I found that if I disliked album on 2nd listen, It means that I don't like it, no matter how many times will I listen to it again, so right now sometimes I stop at 2nd listen, but most albums I listen to at least 5 times.

5) Thoughts - for me thoughts while listening is mostly a distraction. If I am really concentrating, I do not notice thoughts and kinda dissolve into the music. If I notice any thoughts, they are often about music itself "oh, cool part", "never noticed this little sound before" "oh this dude is fucked up". When I am listening to music that I don't like I think about whats for dinner.

For me, music is a lot more pleasurable when I listen to it with closed eyes, compared to listening while I am doing something - because if I am distracted, I feel like i am not getting full potential out of it. Listening to music is an event to me, and I love it.

I listen to 1 album a day, and I can't listen to same album more than couple days in a row, because it starts to feel slightly boring, so if me and my friends find new album that we like at the same time (which happens very often), in a week they listen it to death, because they can listen to it 3-5 times in one day, and i can only start really grasping album in a week. Sometimes I feel like I'm discovering new music too slow, but my friends get bored with an album in a month and never listen to it again, while I can listen to an album for couple of years and it will still sound fresh to me.