[cameroncairns]

Not who you responded to, but I worked in college radio for a while. Depending on what CDs they were listening to, generally the label will highlight which tracks are standouts and that you should listen to. Usually it would be 3 or 4 tracks max (generally track 1, 3 and 4 though there are exceptions).

Most tracks are 3 minutes long.. so given an average of lets say 3 songs a cd at 3 minutes each... 100 x 3 x 3 / 60 == 15 hours of listening (hand wavey no time to change cd and stuff...). So yeah probably pushing the limits of reasonable but not quite as crazy as you might think.

Also, although it was unfair to the artist, I would usually make up my mind on pop songs by the end of the first chorus. If I'm not hooked within 1 minute it's probably not going to play on my show. It was brain numbing work, and frankly made me view music as a chore for a few years afterwards... but you can listen to quite a few tracks this way and try and find the few gems amongst the chaff so to speak.