Almost half of UK adults haven’t listened to a full album in the past year, survey finds
Pete Tong likened the findings to “watching just the best scenes from a movie”
A new study has found that 41% of adults have not listened to an album from start to finish in the past year, while 8% say they have never listened to one in full.
National Rail commissioned the survey of 2,000 people as part of its new Track Reset campaign , fronted by Pete Tong MBE, which encourages passengers to discover new music while travelling by train.
As reported by The Scarborough News , 70% of respondents who identified as “serious music fans” said they regularly listen to the same songs and artists. On average, they play their favourite track 343 times a year and rotate between just six artists.
Among those surveyed, 64% said they repeatedly listen to the same music because “they like what they like”, while nostalgia and comfort were also cited as key reasons. More than a third (36%) described themselves as “creatures of habit”, although only 27% said they had no interest in broadening their musical tastes.
In a press statement, Pete Tong MBE likened the listening habits to “watching just the best scenes from a movie”, saying the rise of algorithm-led music discovery has made it easier for listeners to rely on familiar playlists and repeat the same tracks.
“The way we interact with music has fundamentally shifted, and it’s easy to let an algorithm do all the thinking for you, or rely on that one playlist of favourite songs, keeping you stuck replaying the same safe tracks... Train journeys offer a beautiful, rare window of time to completely switch off, reset your mind, and seek out something new.”
To address the lack of musical exploration identified in its research, National Rail commissioned music psychologist Dr. Ruth Herbert and producer Adriano to create a track designed to make listeners more receptive to new music and genres.
“This research proves that modern consumers of music crave deeper moments of discovery, but choice paralysis stops us discovering new sounds”, Dr. Herbert said in a press statement. “By cleansing the listener’s musical palate over a three-minute span, we are quite literally priming the brain to welcome and enjoy new audio patterns for when they arrive at their festival or gig, and on the train there is the perfect time to do this.”
Listen to National Rail’s ‘Track Reset’ below, and find out more about the campaign here .
Pete Tong recently denied allegations from John Summit that his planned collaborative remix of Everything But The Girl’s ‘Missing’ with Franky Rizardo used elements “jacked” from a separate version with Summit .
