I'm more or less ambivalent about the whole thing. While I do appreciate albums in their entirety, I guess I'm used to singles as well... having a background in a lot of Electronic music that is often released as singles.
I actually like to take singles by a single particular artist and arrange them into an album of my own making, based on what I think the flow should be, pretty much like a mixtape. It's rewarding but by no means a necessity for me.
I'm likely to put an entire genre folder on shuffle before I'm likely to listen to an entire album if it's not something I just acquired and am trying to get a feel for.
For me, the package is whatever you want it to be. I've remixed songs in my library just because I wanted to hear them differently. I respect artist's original intentions, but I don't consider them sacred by any means.
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