I guess another aspect to throw into the mix is that most people today - don't buy albums. They don't even buy singles really - they just buy/download songs.
You could argue that iTunes put paid to that - but then again, when was the last decent "album" of musical work that was a coherent whole, released?
The 1980s? Def Leppard's Hysteria ?
So in a way - the delivery mechanism, ie. albums as in a CD or an LP is, to some extent in a digital environment, flawed.
Disregarding the amount of innocuous pap that's being presented as musical talent these days.