Album

An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), or audio tape (like 8-track or cassette), or in digital format.

The album was the dominant format or unit of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s through to the early 21st century, a period that has been described in the industry as the album era. Vinyl LPs are still issued for certain album releases, though album sales in the 21st-century have been predominantly in CD and then downloadable (e.g. MP3) and streaming digital formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format, widely used alongside vinyl, from 1965 until being phased out by 1983—it was gradually supplanted by the cassette tape over the 1970s and early 1980s. The popularity of the cassette reached its peak during the late 1980s before declining sharply during the 1990s as it yielded market share to compact disc formats. In the early 2000s, sales of CDs—which also typically contained around 45-60 minutes (or 'an album') of music—became the primary distribution mechanism for recorded music, until the rise in the 2010s of digital, whereby albums could be downloaded and then streamed through 'streaming services' or 'platforms' such as Spotify. An enormous variety of albums are now more widely (often globally) available, and listening to an album has been made cheaper, more convenient and more popular, through such services.