In the modern discourse on music, the idea of "the death of the album" has been a topic1 of2 discussion3 among fans and critics since the 2010s. Typically, these complaints boil down to these points:
These points are all true. However, the album is still here, and, in my opinion, probably isn't going away anytime soon.
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I’ll make my relationship with albums and playlists clear. I try listening through an entire album once a week. While I’m usually able to stick to this practice, there have been plenty of complications, and I find myself listening to fewer new albums as the years go on. For example, I'm often less willing to commit to albums I've never listened to before. As a teenager there was a special kind of thrill for going down a rabbit hole of new album after new album. That thrill isn’t entirely gone. But, often, I’ll find myself starting a new album before switching to “one of the classics” at the last second. Plus, for albums I’ve previously listened to, I end up distracting myself with another task (homework, writing, chores) while listening, excusing myself with the idea that "well, I already know what to expect, I don't need complete focus". I’m trying to erase those behaviors from my music listening routines entirely, instead sticking with playlists when I want a more casual listening experience.
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Maybe it's a stretch to make the distinction between album and playlist seem so significant. After all, they're both just collections of songs. Streaming especially makes it hard, considering you can find both albums and playlists in the same places. It's tricky to make that distinction clear, or explain why it matters, but I'll give it my best try.
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With albums, there's an impulse to view things through a linear experience, or “front to back” like a novel. You take each song and categorize it in your mind, considering how songs tie together, what the theme of the album is, and even consider the track listing and why each song was put in its place. This makes sense, but in the current age of many distractions, little time, and even less attention span, the idea of spending that much time with a single piece of art is daunting.
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Making a playlist is more like curating an art exhibit. There are ones focused on a single artist, but they typically involve works from different artists, different styles, and even different eras. Playlists prioritize a cohesive mood over a cohesive narrative or theme. In this way, playlists are designed to be the perfect background music to hyper-specific situations, some examples being:
At the same time, playlists provide an inherently fleeting experience. A song loads up, you listen to it, take it in, and then, just as quickly, you forget it and move on to the next one.
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When it comes to playlists, I'm more open to an approach of anarchy. Yes, don’t even start. I know about that one time you passed the aux cord to someone and they put on a playlist that had NWA, Katy Perry, Simple Plan, and a song from Blue’s Clues5 and it was really weird and you kicked them out of the vehicle.6 This isn't to say that all of my playlists are that way and should all be that way. Just, people shouldn't worry as much about what fits or "makes sense" together when building a playlist. Certain genres and styles end up mixing surprisingly well (try ambient and Black Metal together sometime). Besides, if things “get weird”, you can just take the song out of rotation and pretend it never happened.
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To me, playlists are inherently from the perspective of an "outsider", someone who wasn’t directly involved in making some or all of the songs included. In other words, making playlists involves curating music from the perspective of a fan, not an artist.
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A mixtape is a direct parallel to the playlist. It involves an artist rummaging through their discography and collecting tracks not associated with any of their albums, such as stand-alone singles, B-sides, and songs with uncleared samples. The result is a hodgepodge of music, created with the sole purpose of “vibing” to. Artists aren’t expecting the listener to contemplate their mixtapes or continuously revisit them, which is why they're willing to release mixtapes on a more regular basis and in messier states than albums. This results in some artists being mind-bogglingly7 8 9 productive with mixtape releases, reaching dozens to even hundreds of mixtapes released throughout their careers. While mixtapes are associated with hip hop, artists from other10 genres11 have released mixtapes of their own, successfully capturing the essence of the format (liberal use of samples, messier production and mixing, limited distribution). Mixtapes are especially popular on platforms like YouTube and Soundcloud, where artists are given more freedom in how they want to present, format, and release their music. Thus, mixtapes serve as “playlists made by artists”. (As an aside, one of the only releases by a mainstream artist marketed as a playlist that I can think of was More Life by Drake, which most fans and critics agreed was just a mixtape with different/bad marketing.)
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Concept albums are the most obvious example of a musical work attempting to be a cohesive whole. While defining the concept album and deciding what qualifies as one are contentious topics among music fans, I think you can categorize them into two primary types:
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The album is at a big turning point. As previously mentioned, we've been hearing for years about how the album is dying or already dead. Yet, the album survives and even thrives as of 2025. Acclaimed albums27 are still being released every year, and while the overall picture for album sales is complicated28 29 30, there's reason to have hope. It's interesting to note that one of 2024's most acclaimed albums, Brat by Charli XCX31, could be seen as a concept album in the second sense I mentioned (in that the album's theme is exploring the rave/party lifestyle in all its messy, beautiful, loud, aggressive [drug-induced] glory32). Musicians have not run out of ideas and are still finding new and exciting ways to express themselves through conventional music formats. This, over any sales metrics, is what makes me optimistic about the future of the album, though I’m sure there will be plenty of rough spots in the next 5-10 years, we will find out soon enough. In the meantime, I'll be in my room, fine-tuning my playlists.
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Footnotes
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