albums: are they overrated?

When you think about it...an album is like an artist making a playlist out of their own tracks *galaxy brain*

I have not read the thread yet but my take is that because there is no money in music anymore, or being able to take decent amount of time to just tour/practise/work on ideas, the album format is fucked because people who should be given enough time to come up with 10-15 great, cohesive songs together are busy paying the rent, and come up with their one killer idea idea or two in their spare time, making the album obsolete for many who could have wowed with the format or time to grow.

Weirdly enough, having the technology to listen to a whole bunch of albums is actually making me more likely to listen to albums. I used to just download individual tracks (or, to be more exact, ask my brother to download them for me because I am a luddite), or buy them from itunes, and so it was cheaper and easier to just put a bunch of individual tracks on my ipod and make playlists or hit shuffle.

I finally got Spotify a little over a year ago, and it feels like such a luxury to just be able to listen to albums all the way through, the way I did when I was a kid. It's so much richer and more immersive, I have a context for what I'm hearing, I have more to think about because of the way the songs interact with each other, and I'm not as likely to burn myself out on individual songs. I still make playlists, but I would say that at least 70% of the time I'm listening to albums.