Informative listening is where the listener has to understand the message being conveyed by the speaker. For instance, listening to a lecture or listening to a superior about project details represents informative listening. Informative listening helps the listener learn new things. Listening for information requires three aspects: a good vocabulary, to understand what the speaker is conveying; concentration, to absorb and retain the message that is conveyed; and memory, to store and process information.
Appreciative listening refers to all those situations in which you listen to something in order to enjoy it. The most common example of this kind of listening is a situation in which you listen to a song or a performance at a concert. The definition is subjective in that what can be a source of appreciative listening for one person may not be the same for another. Appreciative listening depends on the listener's perception as well as the speaker's presentation of the material.
This kind of listening requires the listener to not only pay attention to the material or information being presented, but also process the information and evaluate it. Listening to a politician's pre-election speech, for instance, requires critical reasoning on the part of the voters; listeners have to process the speech to understand whether the speaker is stating the truth, whether the promises being made by her will be fulfilled, and whether her manifesto is something that will actually help her constituency or country.
There are several other types of listening methods, some of which are used on a daily basis. Relationship listening is that in which two or more parties listen in order to strengthen their relationship. Sympathetic listening involves the listener showing his concern for the speaker, while empathetic listening involves the listener trying to understand what the speaker is going through. Biased listening means that the speaker listens to something, but misinterprets or misunderstands the information to conform to his biases and ideas.