Recently I've been mulling over the possibility that, as online music purchasing grows more prevalent, consumers will lean towards buying individual songs, no longer fettered by the physical limitation of the CD itself. They'll simply go online & download that last particular song that was lodged in their head when they heard it over the loudspeaker while buying wallpaper earlier in the day. Thus, with the consumer's ability to pick & choose exactly what they want to hear, the artist will inevitably lose control over the context of the music. The decades-old concept of the album as a deliberate artistic structure will be abandoned & we'll return to the pre-Sgt Pepper milieu of songs existing of themselves. The concept album will become an artifact. Not to mention cover art.
The only thing I lament about this likelihood is that instant gratification could rob us of hidden treasures. I can't imagine how many times I've bought an album, picked out a few songs as my favorites & concentrated mainly on those, only to later discover one of those supposedly "weaker" tracks contained some subtle piece of magic that I never would have recognized had I left them off my shopping list just because they didn't grab me first time around.
Humans, being creatures of arrogance, most of the time act too hastily for our own wellbeing - flailing around & knocking things over. Sometimes it's better to let an impulse stew for awhile before we act on it. We don't always recognize a good thing first time it rears its head. That's all I'm saying.
"The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt at once, and wait for her ... too slow for us nowadays, because the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare." ~ The Magnificent Ambersons
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