[cferneyh]

This can be verified by a simple experiment. You compile two playlists. One playlist groups a set of songs that flows, and the other jumbles them at random. You then subject a large number of volunteer listeners to one or the other of the playlists, and record their impressions -- not of the flow but of (a) the individual songs and (b) the playlist as a whole.

My suggestion is that the listeners of the jumbled playlist will not only rate the playlist lower as a whole, but also rate the individual songs lower.

I wonder who this will play out with the iPod generation. Only under extremely rare situations do I listen to a full CD from beginning to end anymore. The version of World Container that I made for playing in the car doesn't have Pretend or World Container, but does have a selection of tracks from the Live 10 series.

When I'm listening to my iPod, which is pretty much all day at work, it's pretty damn rare for me to have the same artist come up twice in a row, let alone the same "flow". Two tracks ago was Hells Bells, now it's Ray Lamontagne.

I know that most people download full albums from iTunes rather than individual tracks, but I've got to believe that most people eventually pull out the tracks from an album that they like best, and throw those into their playlists. As such, will an album's "flow" gradually cease to impact how one responds to an album? 20 years from now will revisionists cite M@W as the Hip's greatest work?