What I learned with my time with speakers is the make-or-break aspect is the interaction between the speakers and room, and your listening position.
If it’s wrong then $25,000 of gear is not going to save it. Get it right and off the shelf from Best Buy can be surprisingly good.
Of course normal rooms, rectangular and symmetric, are the worst environment for speakers. Reflections
and interference will drag things down.
Rooms with a little echo (but not parallel surfaces) help a lot.
This has been an interesting topic with several layers. For now, I’ll briefly comment on the notion of the day the album “died.”
The demise of the album and the beginning to end (A-side and B-side) enjoyment thereof: CDs > mix tapes > burning CDs > Scour > Napster > iTunes downloads > music streaming > playlists > YouTube video streaming. Access and convenience eclipsing unbridled artistic expression.
That being said, artists and listeners have adapted and continue to create and enjoy.
I’m likely glossing over other factors and considerations.
I would have agreed with you 100% a year ago, because most of my listening was during commuting or at work, where I listened to songs playing on shuffle on carefully curated playlists on my iPod Touch at 320 kbps AAC quality. But my home listening has always been album based, so now that I’m stuck at home all the time, my music experience has flipped 180 degrees to whole albums on Foobar, at FLAC quality. That’s interesting, it never occurred to me until you made that point.
Well streaming has been outselling CD, download and LP sells, but LP has been outselling CD. LP sells have jumped in the last 13 years. Not trying to get into which is best or not. I do enjoy streaming.
This is an interesting point. It’s often said, or assumed, that the decline of the album has stemmed from changes in the way we purchase or access recorded music (and I agree with your sequence re. shifts across formats and how we listen to music). I wonder if it also works the other way round: that artists no longer wish (or think) to make coherent albums as a single, unified piece of music. Perhaps the two are intertwined - that a new generation of musicians, who grew up with iTunes downloads and streaming, are now making and releasing music in ways that reflect their own ways of listening to music.
I don’t want to suggest that albums are moribund today. I’m writing here of indie/alternative rock: there are clearly still artists and bands who deliberately make and release pieces of music that are some 40-60 minutes in length and that have a coherent musical vision running through all of the songs. But those albums are now few and far between as compared with the 90s and previously. (I’m one of those deeply uncool, embarrassing middle-aged guys who still keeps up with the latest releases, or tries to.)
I’ve been buying individual downloads from albums for 17 or so years now. I got into the habit of just buying the good songs on an album as a poor grad student, trying to get the most bang for my scarce buck. Seldom, in that time, have I purchased the entire album, because I rarely find an album that has a majority of tracks that I like (again, I’m thinking of alternative rock here). There’s a danger with this habit, though, which is that previewing and buying individual tracks can make it all too easy to miss those albums that aren’t immediately appealing, that are difficult, and that need time and repeat listenings to appreciate properly.
All this has led me to a place where I listen to new alternative rock in two complementary ways: via greatest hits EPs, whittled down from albums, and through playlists. I make anywhere from 5-10 playlists a year, as ca. 60-minute compilations of the best new music I’ve discovered since the last ones I compiled. I have playlists like this going back for more than a decade now. They make for nice time capsules. And they’ve basically become, for me, a substitute for the albums of old. They may be comprised of music by different artists. But I make an effort to put the songs together in a unified way, with each one having a certain kind of vibe or sound to it. So they’re kinda like albums.
The album is dead, long live the album?
I personally don’t think albums are dead. I do favor and respect albums as whole artistic pieces, but we’re in a new/different era in which music is created, released, and enjoyed/consumed.
@PaisleyUnderground I’m also listening to more entire albums from home these days.
@cpp the jump (preservation) in LP sales has been good to see. I’m also not intending to get into what is best (either quality, access, etc.). The various formats/mediums each have their own advantages, and we all benefit from variety/choice. I (try to) enjoy it all.
@Tchoupitoulas great post. Besides technology, I believe artist and music industry shifts can also be attributed to the '96 Telecommunications Act, the consequences of which you alluded to.
Separately, my preferences if I had to choose one:
Visual TV and movies: streaming (convenience, good enough quality).
Audio music: LPs and CDs (tangible, collectible).
Books and magazines: hardcopy.
Newspapers: online.
Daily news: podcasts and radio (increased control and filter).
*Editing my original post to add YouTube video streaming as a factor.
And that’s the bottom line we have as music lovers, variety and choice.
OOOhh Napster! You bad boy.
I plead the 5th 
! The days of Winamp skins.
I believe this is the case. Music has been influenced by the format since the beginning:
Your music buying experience mirrors my own, @Tchoupitoulas.
I would say that progressive rock has always used longer tracks with multiple movements and albums with a coherent musical vision - concept albums. There are still modern bands that make concept albums, but they are more difficult to find as marketing such music is more difficult. As you said, it’s all too easy to miss an album that isn’t immediately appealing. But man! Once you find one it is sooooo gooooood!
Yes, it really is! I love it when you’ve skipped over an album, or dismissed it on first listen, only to see lots of folks praise it, then go back and try it again, and then fall in love with it!
I think these often make for the most rewarding albums, and ones that remain enduringly appealing, too.
The Who Sell Out.
One of the first and still stellar examples.
Its easy after reading the article, SHOW ME THE MONEY ! 
But this comment by Stills, " “I can’t work, and streaming stole my record money,” Crosby said
Exactly. They gotta eat and are victims too 
That quote by Crosby was really interesting. My first thought was “How can he have no money after selling that number of albums and going on money making tours or is it all being spent on drugs?”
But after reading a few more articles on him, I realized he’s got the same cashflow problems that the rest of us have, just magnified. Our spending habits are (hopefully) based on the income we receive each month. His monthly expenditure is no doubt gigantic compared to mine, but the problem is that it’s probably based on past, not current, income levels, whereas my income, although tiny in comparison, has at least been consistent.
For some reason, the other members of CSNY are not talking to him, so even if Covid was not here, that takes away the enormous profits from touring in the future. And streaming has decimated income from album sales. He posted a tweet to clarify that quote.
DC has said a few interesting things this year.
Good point on them having parallel cashflow problems based on reduced income levels.
I was reminded of the lyric/song - Mo Money, Mo Problems.
