Chris Brooks: Are we losing the "experience" of the album format?

Are we losing the "experience" of the album format?

When writing a Forward for my upcoming CD packaging, I was reflecting on the anticipation I used to feel when a new album from my favorite artist (or some new discovery) would finally come into stock at Utopia Records in Sydney, and the "process" I used to go through before hearing it. Here's what I wrote for the CD jacket.
Between you and me, I love the fact that you paid for this album. Yes, it’s getting harder as each year goes by for a musician to find suitable compensation in the recorded medium, but I’m so glad you’ve made your investment in me. We’ve all got our points of view on “the industry”, but I thank God that there are still people willing to look past the price of plastic and paper involved in a reproducing a CD, and make a symbolic contribution to the artist for the experience of an album.
As a younger man, I relished the ritual of buying an album from the store (sometimes completely blind, buying on a whim, a guess, or a recommendation), then spending the hour-long train ride home reading the CD jacket, taking in the details of who did what on the album, reading and analysing the song titles and lyrics, scouring the thank-yous for names I recognise, and guessing what the songs might sound like. The anticipation often made the eventual first listen even more exciting. And if the album rocked, which it mostly did (I always was a good pick), it would stay in my CD player for two months, where it would be, to use a cliche, the soundtrack to the events happening in other areas of my life.
We’re truly in ever-changing times, and there has been such a change of mindset towards music and its value in our lives. Albums are gobbled down like breakfast cereal, and like cereal, we’re ready to replace it with another meal a few hours later. It seems like the listening experience in our time-starved, information-loaded, easily-distracted lives has somehow diminished the impact we allow a single album to have in our lives. It is my hope that you buck the trend and really take time to enjoy this album!

Let's not talk about file"sharing" here, but instead... do you feel that the instant availability (by whatever means) of music, the faster than ever pace of life, and our extremely divided attention in this current age has diluted the experiences I described above?

I'd be keen to hear what the teens and 20 somethings out there feel about how us old guys in our 30s and beyond grew up listening to vinyl and CDs. read the responses

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