According to this, LPs were big in the 70s, cassettes in the 80s and CDs in the 90s until around 2006 when downloading (a lot of it illegally) became popular. Was that the point when the album became a thing of a past? Record sales - Wikipedia
I don't think it's like an on/off switch that music changed from one dominant format to another. For example, albums used to have tracks grouped conceptually as A-side and B-side, with some intent behind which song started the A-side or B-side playback, but the CD format changed that. The shift in how a group of songs was organized didn't happen overnight. With the "album" format, I think the biggest rift was the start of iTunes in 2003. Apple required that tracks be sold individually (for 99 cents). Before that, with the CD format, consumers were forced to to buy an "album" just to get the one or two tracks they really wanted. Music was packaged as "albums," and record labels would have one album out at a time to market the heck out of it. I think iTunes started moving record companies and artists away from the "album" format and reworking how they packaged and released music. Later, as music streaming became popular, artists started figuring out that they did not have to release music when they had a set of 10 songs for an album. They could release one song a month, or an EP every few months. It would find its way to fans on the streaming services, and it worked better with modern social media marketing, having brand new content to promote every week or month to keep fans continuously engaged and interested in following the artist.
Dead, yet strangely profitable. There are tiny Pacific islands where albums are used as money. They are hoarded by speculators, ground up and smoked, considered an aphrodisiac in Somalia, spread over fields to kill the invasive Tobacco Weevil.
If we are discussing stuff like this the op could at least have linked the corresponding article: Album era - Wikipedia
I disagree with the statement that the album era ended in 2006. Obviously the advent of music streaming was a game changer in a way that albums could be released and listened to but in the last ten years there's been albums like Norman ****** Rockwell, To Pimp A Butterfly and Blonde as well as countless others which are seen as huge artistic statements and ones that need to be listened to from start to finish.
This Albums will always have a place in the consumption of music, but the vast majority of music is currently consumed on the basis of individual tracks. Albums no longer have the stature that they did between 1966 and 2006. It was a good run, though.
While I often agree with you I don't think the OP is stating anything wild or weird. I am an Album lover as I have repeatedly stated and even I have admitted that the Album is pretty much on life support. I might quibble about the date since significant synth pop Albums continued to come out until 2010 or so. Now I feel it is increasingly a retro phenomenon for older groups and those doing a neo style like say Triptides or Lana. Country is a bit of a lagging indicator so I wouldn't put much weight on Taylor Swift etc in terms of albums.YSMMV (Your streaming mileage may vary)
First time reading that. Great article. In 2006, CD sales were outnumbered for the first time by single downloads, with digital music consumers buying singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1 Also should be remembered that while people were buying downloads, the overall revenue of the music industry fell. This is probably because a lot of people opted for illegal downloads than legal ones. Oddly even music revenue appears to be back around the same level as it was in the 80s thanks to streaming. However while revenue is up, artists aren't making as much as they did back then. An artist would rather someone pay £15 for a CD, even if they don't listen to it again than play the best tracks from that album a million times. It pays more.
Another argument that the album era is over is the total lack of compilation albums. If this was the 90s, we would have already have best selling Greatest Hits CDs from big singles acts like Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Pink.
If the album era ended in 2006, what have I been buying for the last 17 years? Vinyl LP sales are at their highest for over 30 years and they contain collections of songs which are generally referred to as albums.