Do you Binge Listen?

I may be an oddity when it comes to how I spend my time. I have had numerous conversations and have heard many mentions of binge watching over the years. With Netflix and Amazon Prime to the rescue, the chatter about binge watching has continued to grow, however I have not heard as much mention of binge listening. ​

The top 10 auto fill when you type in "What should I binge" in google search is an indicator of how un-common the phrase binge listening is.

Additionally, you can also see the relative trends for the search phrases binge watch / binge watching vs binge listening. Spikes during May of 2016 probably attributable to Netflix launching in 150 countries then, and the spike in 2020 is probably attributable to Covid-19 lockdown.​

I set out to do some research on binge listening, starting with the origin of the word binge, what it really means, and a few other things noteworthy of mention.

• Origin and meaning of "Binge" - A Lincolnshire dialect word meaning ‘to soak’.

• I found an interesting article on dictionary.com about how using the word "binge" casually dilutes the meaning of the phrase “binge eating disorder”, So would that make "binge listening" a disorder?

• Did you know about “listener fatigue”, A phenomenon that occurs after prolonged exposure to auditory stimulus. I am not sure about your listening skills, but I can say it is hard and may take only a few seconds to have “listener fatigue”

Growing up during the radio era, I knew a lot of people who would intensely listen to the ball by ball commentary of test cricket. For those of you who are not from the Cricket playing countries, it is a five day game with approximately 6 hours of playtime each day. Is that considered normal listening or binge listening? Based on the context, I am not sure. Some of you must be thinking “I listen to music for many hours in a day” and is that binge listening? Well then the question becomes are you actively listening to the music or is it just background noise that you are not paying attention to.

For over 10 years I had a two plus hour round trip commute to Philadelphia. I was able to make that a very productive commute by listening to Audiobooks and Podcasts. My ability to focus was driven by my interest in the book and sometimes how the author was able to narrate the story. A few good stories would make me wait on the driveway for it to finish, a few times I would zone out and the rest just normal days.

Over the last few years my commute has been either non existent or less than 10 minutes. Last year my commute door to door was about 5 minutes with less than a 2 minute drive. Who would have thought that I would miss Schuylkill expressway, I am sure the South Eastern Pennsylvanians get this. Over the last few weeks I have tried to get 5-6 miles of walk every day and I am either on calls for work or try to sneak in a few podcasts in a week.

Is there such a thing as Binge listening?

You can call me a fan of Michael Lewis, I was introduced to his work when I first read his book Big Short. Listened to it on audio twice more and watched the movie as well. Just out of my MBA program in 2008, I was very curious about what I had not learnt of the financial system. While we had a good level of skepticism drilled into our brains along with teachings on the rational models, the human behavioral aspects were somewhat of a miss. I have read a lot more books of Michael since and have listened to him being interviewed by various personalities.

During a recent weekend walk, approximately 9 miles each of the days, I started listening to Michael Lewis’s Against the rules podcast and in two days finished the entire season 1, 444 minutes to be precise. As soon as I was done, I was thinking, Did I just binge listen to this podcast? That was not the first time I have binge listened to podcasts or Audio on Youtube.

I for one think binge listening is not as popular as binge watching. It looks like we evolved from Radio generation to TV generation to Netflix generation and while podcast and other audio mediums have grown in popularity it looks like podcast generation has stayed on the sidelines.

Do you binge listen?, and What do you binge listen to?

#BingeListening