I thought this BBC post about the future of the album was interesting, considering that I spend more time than I’d like trying to decide what counts as an album for my music listening project. The article is pondering the past and future of the album, given how much focus there has been on singles of late, with Taylor Swift leading the charge in a celebration of all things long play.

There have been a couple of artists that have never released an album that I would have liked to get on the album adventure (Haiz and Charles Esten) but I hadn’t realised it was becoming a wider trend. I can’t see that anyone can change the momentum if that’s how it’s going, not even Taylor, but that doesn’t mean they can’t keep doing their own thing.

The problem they face though, and the most interesting part of this post, for me, is in two parts. The artist view, Billie Eilish:

Every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I’m just already prone to hating on it. I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone.

And then what the fans do, via Martin Talbot of the Official Charts Company:

The great thing about the digital environment is that it puts the control in the hands of the consumer, in the hands of music fans. Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, they may just be releasing albums, but each of those tracks that make up those albums is available to stream in isolation. And if those tracks get enough streams, they will go into the singles chart, regardless of whether the artist deems them to be singles or not.

It doesn’t really matter what the artist intends, the people are going to listen to what they want to listen to, in the way they want to listen.