In 2024, we’ve seen a plethora of great albums, but Spotify Wrapped noticeably lacked a top albums leaderboard alongside its top artists and songs - luckily for me, Apple Music had one! However, if a media giant like Spotify has begun ignoring the role of the album, it begs the question: is there still a place for the form today?

In order to market their music, pop artists have to cater to social media, and undoubtedly, songs are better suited to short-form content than albums. Olivia Rodrigo once said in an interview that she actually wrote part of her first hit single, ‘Driver’s License’, in the hope that it would be used as a viral sound: “I wanted people to make TikToks where they could like transition into it, and I thought […] it would like be a cue, and people did make TikToks like that, so I’m really happy about that.”

Her focus seemed not on how the song could cohere with a future album or larger body of work, but on how a smaller part of the song itself could attract attention. True, Rodrigo’s albums have topped the charts alongside her singles, but is this success not owed to the TikTok-tailored promotion rather than the album itself? This is certainly apparent when other artists’ older songs start trending; the singles get a resurgence online, but not their corresponding albums.

“It seems people simply add the viral song to their playlist and neglect to listen to the body of work that contextualises it”

After featuring in Stranger Things in 2022, Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ became number one in the UK singles chart and the top-streaming song in both the UK and US, but Hounds of Love didn’t see a simultaneous rise in the album charts. Similarly, recently I’ve seen countless reels to the “Wait! They don’t love you like I love you” lyric from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 song ‘Maps’, but this hasn’t translated to more people talking about the song, album, or artist. It seems people simply add the viral song to their playlist and neglect to listen to the body of work that contextualises it.

It is interesting to note how, this year, artists - especially in the pop music genre - have treated their album and single releases to work around this, ensuring their album is listened to as a body of work before it is isolated for use in short-form content.

Billie Eilish released no singles in the lead-up to her 2024 album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, but subsequently plucked out the tracks ‘Lunch’ and ‘Birds of a Feather’ as the singles for radio play and publicity purposes. In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, both Eilish and her brother and producer FINNEAS discussed making albums for an audience who encounter the form in a different medium compared to even a decade ago.

“They need to be long enough to create an arc through the individual songs, but not so long that we’re overwhelmed”

Likewise, Taylor Swift left it until the release day of The Tortured Poets Department to announce the first single, suggesting a shared aim for the appreciation of the album as a body of work without diluting it into its stand-out songs. The extension of the album into a double-album with the release of The Anthology just two hours after the first half of the album came out was an ambitious experiment with the form. However, this ultimately meant it lacked the tight coherency she achieved in previous albums like Folklore. It seems there’s a reason why albums usually aren’t 31 songs long - certainly, they need to be long enough to create an arc through the individual songs, but not so long that we’re overwhelmed and the journey from start to finish loses its sense of narrative cohesion.

Albums are clearly still revered as bodies of work by awards like the Mercury Prize, which annually shortlists the 12 best British albums. However, a lack of investment resulted in this year’s show - arguably the showcase event for British music - being downsized, raising question marks over the reception and perception of the album format within the music industry. 

It seems audiences interact differently with albums nowadays, requiring artists to anticipate these changes both in their releases and marketing strategies. However, hope is not lost for the long form: the very fact that artists have started to adapt in this way suggests they still value the album as more than just a collection of songs.

The fashion of collecting physical records in CD, cassette and vinyl form also suggests that we are reviving the traditional way of interacting with albums - listening to them uninterrupted from start to finish - and reaching for an album, rather than (or in balance with) a playlist to suit our every mood. I certainly hope this is the case, that this time-honoured medium sees a resurgence in appreciation and each (inferior) streaming service has a 2025 album leaderboard once again to celebrate our personal favourites!