History Of The Album

Albums have been around for many years. It used to be the only form of listening to the music that you want to listen to, that was until digital music became available. The first format for albums was the LP records which were albums that were on a vinyl disc. The LP vinyl records were introduced in 1948. Then the Compact cassette was introduced by phillips and it became particularly popular in the 1980's with the release of the Sony Walkman. In 1982 the compact disc was commercially available. This format replaced both the vinyl record and the cassette as the standard for the commercial mass-market distribution of physical music albums. Then in 1995 the MP3 format for music took over and it quickly became the easiest and cheapest way to download and listen to music thanks to websites like Napster. Then later on in the lifecycle of the MP3 format youtube came along (2005). Youtube became the ideal place to stream music from the internet and listen to it freely without charge. All these components contributed to making the traditional album redundant because people found streaming or downloading digital versions of their favourite songs and listening to them whenever they want, for free on their phones, laptops or Ipods much easier and convenient. 

I never purchased an album before but my parents have and they always had them around all over the house. Even when i was listening to the songs on the album, I hardly ever wanted to listen to the whole album because not all the songs on the album are good. When you download your own music you can pick and choose specific songs that you enjoy and experience music in that way which is much more convenient. All this information accumulated shows that Digipaks are no longer relevant in todays society.