C# : assign data to properties via constructor vs. instantiating

Question

Supposing I have an Album class :

public class Album 
{
    public string Name {get; set;}
    public string Artist {get; set;}
    public int Year {get; set;}

    public Album()
    { }

    public Album(string name, string artist, int year)
    {
        this.Name = name;
        this.Artist = artist;
        this.Year = year;
    }
}

When I want to assign data to an object of type Album, what is the difference between the next 2 approaches :

Via Constructor

var albumData = new Album("Albumius", "Artistus", 2013);

or when instantiating

var albumData = new Album 
                    {
                         Name = "Albumius",
                         Artist = "Artistus",
                         Year = 2013
                    };

Answer 1

Both approaches call a constructor, they just call different ones. This code:

var albumData = new Album 
                {
                     Name = "Albumius",
                     Artist = "Artistus",
                     Year = 2013
                };

is syntactic shorthand for this equivalent code:

var albumData = new Album();
albumData.Name = "Albumius";
albumData.Artist = "Artistus";
albumData.Year = 2013;

The two are almost identical after compilation (close enough for nearly all intents and purposes). So if the parameterless constructor wasn't public:

public Album() { }

then you wouldn't be able to use the object initializer at all anyway. So the main question isn't which to use when initializing the object, but which constructor(s) the object exposes in the first place. If the object exposes two constructors (like the one in your example), then one can assume that both ways are equally valid for constructing an object.

Sometimes objects don't expose parameterless constructors because they require certain values for construction. Though in cases like that you can still use the initializer syntax for other values. For example, suppose you have these constructors on your object:

private Album() { }
public Album(string name)
{
    this.Name = name;
}

Since the parameterless constructor is private, you can't use that. But you can use the other one and still make use of the initializer syntax:

var albumData = new Album("Albumius")
                {
                     Artist = "Artistus",
                     Year = 2013
                };

The post-compilation result would then be identical to:

var albumData = new Album("Albumius");
albumData.Artist = "Artistus";
albumData.Year = 2013;