Listening to music- Then and Now

Remember when you got your allowance (mine was $5 a week) and you ran down to the record store (you have heard of records haven't you) and bought your favorite new album and ran home and listened to it- played it over and over again and learned all the songs and all the words to the songs? That is not how it happens now with shuffle....
First of all we now can buy just a song (kind of like the 45's of days of yore). More importantly once you download or upload a cd and it goes into your music file- how often do you listen to the cd in its entirety?
you may choose (as my kids do) to listen to  A SONG over and over again. I know that I almost always either have my music on shuffle - where i frequently find myself saying- "wow what a great song- what is it? I have so much music on my I things (pad, pod, phone) that I would need to be stranded on a desert Island for more than a week to hear all my music consecutively.
I do make playlists and listen to those occasionally but I wonder if artists don't get a really fair shake because I do not get "intimate" enough with the to really "know" their music.
The instant gratification of ITunes or Amazon is very different from the days of old when you sat by your radio (if you could not afford the album) with your tape recorder ready to capture that song when the dJay played it.  (I have since learned that this may have been illegal). The best day to do this was Christmas day because WABC (the pop radio station) played the top 100 countdown- the problem was we were never home on Christmas Day.

Most people know that I am a huge Steve Jobs fan and that I also love instant gratification. The I (pod,pad,phone) has changed my life and how I appreciate music and teach some of that to my kids. For all the good this has caused I can't imagine how many great songs I may never hear.