Over the past 8 years the Music industry has changed remarkably. Much of this is due to the advent of Apple's ipod, on October 23, 2001. This device almost single handedly buried the "album" and arguably the CD as a musical format as well.

Via Social Media Graphics

To be fair Social Media played a big role in this as well. Napster and file sharing services also played a part is this drastic shift in music marketing as well. This change was a "perfect storm" that has left the record industry struggling to keep pace. I have read somewhere that the record industry asserts that 95% of the music downloaded last year was not paid for.

"The RIAA famously brought cases against single mothers, children as young as 12 and, in at least one case,
someone who was deceased. Many of the 18,000-plus people who were sued
paid four figures to settle the charges. But even with the settlements,
the litigation initiative cost the RIAA far more than it took in,
generated enormous bad publicity, and did nothing to stem the record
industry's losses." via MediaPost.com

Personally I believe this change is musical habits was a natural evolution as social media enabled people to share musical choices and filter out content types more easily. The losses are due to the record industries' failure to embrace social media due to the lucrative proceeds that come from producing albums with a single hit and filling the rest of the album with filler tracks. Radio also played a part in the demise of the previous musical model. Payola has log dominated which tracks are played and the record industry is the reason we only here five or six songs played repeatedly on most major stations. I don't miss the album one bit, and I think this change is positive and I love the fact that the power is slowly swinging toward content creators.