It's hard to speak for everyone but my experience with music suggests a complete opposite. Singles and the charts seem to be a thing of the past and I can’t help but believe that streaming has facilitated that. People like the music that they like, and they binge that music. There are only so many times though that you can listen to an artist’s top songs before you delve into their albums looking for their more underground B-side tracks. This is where the album listens start. Once that first album has been listened, then it’s the next and the next and before you know it you’re on Rolling Stone's list of top 100 albums trying to listen to them all before the end of the year.
So, what’s so seemingly addictive about albums? It’s storytelling, the same as a film or a novel, and who doesn’t love a good story? Good albums have good songs on it, great albums have good songs that all say something when put together. When you can pull together an album with an overarching story in it, you get something sure to sweep the Grammys – see Billie Eilish circa 2019 after her debut album release.
The other thing that’s so attractive about albums? They are just so cool. Anyone that’s seen or read 'High Fidelity' by Nick Hornby knows how well he brings to life the feeling of wanting to know more about music than someone else. To listen to something older, edgier, more underground, to appear as though you aren’t like other music listeners – you take this stuff seriously. That’s all that music fans want and the best way to achieve that feeling is, as we all know, with a great vinyl collection.
Vinyl has gone mainstream over the last decade with more and more, with many middle class households getting record players. They fall into a pattern where for most of the time the record player sits idle, music is kept to streaming and the record player used only at certain times as mostly we are all kept on our phones watching ten second videos until we get hungry. However, when visitors come over, out comes the record player, on goes the album with at least one song that everyone will know and that’s when the upper hand is gained – “Yeah this one’s great and its definitely their most popular… It’s not the best on the album though.” Instantly you have shown everyone at the dinner table that you’re the superior and that it is in fact your guest who is the one that drools over TikTok all day. As long as music has influence over social standing and groups, which it always will, I think albums will be safe.
