Don’t people write and listen to entire albums anymore? When I listen to music, I almost always listen to entire albums, not individual songs.
Few artists have whole albums worth listening to.
Reviews for metal bands will trash albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs.
Some artists have one piece that is great for a wide audience and all of their other stuff is only for select listeners.(aka one hit wonders)
If you only listened to people who release consistently good music - you'd listen to 10 artists in total(or something like that).
Sorry that you know of only ten decent bands, when there are actually tens of thousands of artists that never add filler to their albums.
In hindsight, I should have paid artists fairly, that much is clear to me now (I paid ever since Grooveshark).
Nevertheless, not having experienced the music album phase, it seems like an odd thing to pay for things you know you don't want and have to switch CDs the whole time to get to what you do want. I can't think of a single album I'd listen A-Z. There are a few rare bands where I like most of their songs (because they're very similar), and some bands where I don't like most songs but I like most from one or two of their albums, but I don't think there exists a single album where I like all songs, nor that I like >=50% of the songs in 50% of the albums of which I like >=1 song.
I also grew up during Napster & Co., but it's really not that hard to recognize that albums exist and aren't really tied to a specific medium. You can buy them as digital downloads, on CD or vinyl.
As someone who loves albums and regards EPs let alone singles as a lesser, rushed and not particularly worthwhile format, let me assure you that you don't have to pay for things you don't want. The trick is to buy strong albums that avoid filler content and don't need to rely on a single hit. I admit that it takes effort to find the gems in a sea of mediocrity, but in absolute numbers there are more great albums than ever in addition to the ones you might have missed in the past. I'd say anyone claiming that there isn't any fantastic, album-worthy music isn't looking hard enough.
First of all, I don't listen to albums, I listen to songs.
Secondly, greatness is hard to achieve and even harder to maintain. Listening just to songs as part of great albums composed of only great songs would mean that I would not listen to a lot of great songs, because in many cases some of the other songs on an album are bad. I would also probably listen to a lot fewer artists I like, for the same reason.
Thirdly, sometimes it's not even about great or not. In many cases my opinion of what constitutes a great song disagrees with what the artist considers a great song. So I might not personally like a song on an album. For example, I hate long guitar solos, I consider them a form of musical bravado which I do not like. Obviously guitarists would disagree with me :-)
And lastly, you committed a fallacy, it's called appeal to incredulity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity ("someone must be listening to music <<the wrong way>>, their music must be horrible"). I'm free to listen to whatever I want and there are many ways to happiness. You can't objectively prove that someone's path to happiness is wrong as long as they don't harm someone else.
To quote someone I know: "Everybody thinks that all their friends are nice, all the music they listen to is good and all the code they write is good" :-)
But I think you'll find most folks who do are older and/or fans of specific genres. A lot of acts in some genres don't release "albums" like you're thinking of anymore.
None of my peers do it, though.