I have been thinking for a while that it was only a matter of time until bands started moving towards recording and publishing a fewer number of songs at a time due to digital sales. Albums make sense when you have to press a physical medium and distribute it across the country/world, not so much with a purely digital distribution.

The making of individual tracks also works well with pop music and its mentality, actually, it makes tons of sense, cutting costs by only writing and recording a few songs and spoon feeding it to the radio stations and the general public. The move away from albums is a total shame from an artistic view point. You'd never end up with masterpiece albums like "Dark Side of the Moon" with bands recording a few tracks at a time. I also connect so much of a band and their era's by albums too. Metallica and their change with the black album and everything after that. Even when I download new music today, I acquire full albums to hear everything else the band has made. I'm not looking forward to the day it's mostly individual tracks!