Most of an album being bad as a stereotype I believe was just from actual bad artists when basically anyone could get a deal and possibly go platinum from a single song. Good artists typically had good albums

Possibly, but I think albums are only significant due to the historical medium of music requiring grouping songs together on various disks. Once it’s digital, I don’t see the importance of grouping certain songs together, outside of certain categories like movie soundtracks.

I guess some albums could tell some story about what the musician was feeling at some time, but that probably doesn’t apply for a lot of music if not most. Certainly not the music I listen to, release it one at a time or all together, makes no difference to me.

Long suites of thematically consistent music of course predates recorded music, so I don't think you can chalk it up entirely to the recording medium.

it really depends on how you like to listen to music. an album is often like a snapshot of the artist's sound at a certain point in time. if you listen to death cab for cutie's first and last album back-to-back, you might not realize it's the same band. if what you want out of a listening session is to hear a bunch of vaguely similar sounds in no particular order, an album doesn't do much for you. if you're in the mood for a more specific sound, a good album can be a lot better than eight solid tracks.

And, from everything I've seen (or else Spotify wouldn't be so big), you are in the vast, vast majority of music consumers.

Complaining about the death of the album is one thing, but the reality is that people like listening to singles and playlists.

> consume far more music now that I can easily ignore the 9 out of 10 songs I don’t like in an album (back when CDs were still a thing).

You mean the 9 out of 10 songs that the music label didn't push for airplay, video etc.

With Spotify, you don't "have" any music, you are at their mercy.