> A frame of a movie won’t make sense without the whole movie.
Why not? It means exactly what's in the frame and what you can derive from it alone. The movie in its entirety may have a more profound and precise meaning, sometimes entirely different from what disjointed frames will tell you, which is the point of my analogy.
Perhaps songs-scenes make a more fair analogy. Some albums are basically collections of singles because the collection itself doesn't represent any meaningful overarching theme or creative process. I feel the same about movies. I'd bore myself to death watching another Marvel movie, but I'll happily enjoy some disjointed highlights from them on youtube.
Releasing songs individually is a serial process. Releasing an album puts all of the songs published into the same context, and everyone’s first experience of all songs occur at the same time.
A band that makes a successful album produces something greater than the sum of the individual songs inside the album
I meant that there’s no technical reason a musician can’t release multiple songs at one time and call it an album, meaning as long as there is demand for an album, they should exist.
At this time, I would argue that the main reason that the album continues to exist is because it's woven into the fabric of the music industry. As long as there are Billboard album charts and Grammy's are awarded for best album, there will be albums. For many modern artists, they'd be just as happy dropping a continuous drip of singles.
