Townie made an excellent point about the iPod generation. Today people tend to focus on individual songs, but those of us in our 40s tended to listen to entire albums and we tended to only purchase those albums that were good start-to-finish. Sure, you could buy a single record back then, but it was inconvenient to change the turntable after every song. Also, music was much more valuable in the 70s and 80s because the real cost (adjusting for inflation) was much higher back then. We would purchase an album for $10 in 1980 and we'd listen to it repeatedly because many teenagers couldn't afford a stack of albums at that price. That explains the widespead appeal of Greatest Hits albums (nearly everybody owned Eagles Greatest Hits V. 1 and Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits in the 80s) back then, as well as the fact that certain blockbuster albums such as Thriller did incredibly well. When kids had to make a decision on what was then a huge expenditure, we chose wisely. I tended to purchase a lot of Stevie Wonder albums although I wasn't an R&B fan because I knew anything recorded by Wonder was going to be good start-to-finish.
There seems to be a definite shift toward focusing on single songs at the expense of entire albums now. Now fewer albums are described as complete masterpieces in the way that people used to describe Sgt. Peppers or Rubber Soul, for example. The benefit now is that a broader range of artists have an audience because music is less expensive and people are no longer steered toward blockbuster albums and greatest hits compilations.
