The record industry was never better, in terms of revenue: from physical to digital, then from ownership to streaming, it is having exceptional revenue growth, and never was as profitable as today.
In the process, albuns have way to single and EPs, in a tendency to “consume more, lighter, faster”. Only now, even a single is being too much for the consumer’s attention span:
“Younger consumers are spending so much time on short-clip platforms that it is impacting the amount of time they’re spending listening to full songs.”
What the industry is trying to do about it is, obviously, to monetize it better. After all we all it record industry but we can call it music industry too, and as you can see through all that I wrote, the focus is on ‘industry’, not in the music, musicians or the art. Those, I’m afraid, will remain losing and forgotten, as long as “the industry” manages to keep rising their profit without including their needs in the conversation.