The idea behind creating an album, a collection of songs behind a theme or era of your creative life, lets you tell more of a story in a cohesive way. It lets you create more interconnected works, rather than one idea per song.
Also, it lets you take breaks and lets things breathe. It's really hard to take a song from creation to recording to mastering to releasing without giving yourself a break in the meantime.
Also also, batching out writing, recording, and post-prod makes it go much faster as well
In short, it's far far easier to make 12 songs in a year than one song in a month, and you'll get a much better product out of it.
Not all artists look at it from a purely business perspective. Spotify has the power to support artists, to build any feature they want, using data that no distribution platfo of the past has ever had, but instead they're narrowing the path to success; and justifying it with their own profit motive.
Also, it lets you take breaks and lets things breathe. It's really hard to take a song from creation to recording to mastering to releasing without giving yourself a break in the meantime.
Also also, batching out writing, recording, and post-prod makes it go much faster as well
In short, it's far far easier to make 12 songs in a year than one song in a month, and you'll get a much better product out of it.