RIP the Album?

I was reading through this article on the New Media Family, where the BBC have given a load of the latest high-tech entertainment gadgets to a family to see how we might all use media in the future, and this paragraph grabbed my attention:

But bad news for the future of the album - the girls find they are mostly picking and choosing favourite tracks rather than downloading a whole album.

I've certainly found that with how iTunes has changed my media consumption too. I hear tracks on the radio or, more often now, in a movie, I find out who it is and head to iTunes to see if I can download it. I rarely look at other tracks on the artist's album. I tend to only buy albums when I have heard two or more tracks I really want from that artist/album. Even then I have been disappointed so I may listen to each one and only buy the 4-5 I like (provided it works out cheaper than buying the lot). Those 30 second clips aren't really enough to give you a taste of a song, maybe they should up it to 90 seconds.

I just reminded myself of another paragraph, along these lines:

They find out about new bands online. "You hear about them on Youtube and other sites," says Olivia.

I find stuff like that too, a full-length song on YouTube or somewhere else sparks me to look into an artist or buy the track, just goes to show Google was right to buy YouTube after all, it's just another advertising medium. Media moguls, pay attention.