The media of the day have always had an outsize influence on the format of music. The modern album _exists_ because LPs became available, and the format just kinda persisted because the media after were also limited to a particular length. We're used to this, but we just happened to be born well after the point where listening to music required hiring a chamber orchestra, and the music listened to was designed for that format.

I don't like the playlist (and now, TikTok)-driven market--I too prefer listening to a full album straight through--but there's not really anything more inherently musical about the formats that came before. For better or worse, that's just the nature of the industry.