[allenu]

Sadly, I think it's just that the world has moved on from albums as "coveted" goods that you treasure to just being commodities. With music streaming services, each album isn't as precious as the old days where you'd actually purchase a CD, a cassette, or a vinyl record. There's just so much music out there now, and so readily available. IMHO, as a result, how albums are presented is now just an afterthought.

[ewmiller]

Check out discogs.com. Most music listeners don't covet their physical media anymore, but there are still millions of people globally who buy and trade vinyl, and even CDs.

Anecdotally, I have a friend who collects rare underground CDs from the mid-2000's because vinyl hadn't been revived yet and digital streaming wasn't big yet, so some bands who were only active during that time only ever put out CDs. And personally I have a few dozen vinyl albums that came out in the last 10 years.

With the vinyl revival, I expect album art will still continue to be important to niche music collectors, and any artist who releases in full-album format (many artists just do singles now, so that won't apply to them I'm sure).

[allenu]

Yeah, interestingly I've been buying vinyl from independent artists when I can, and usually they'll include codes to download the digital format. I finally bought a record player a few months ago and have been enjoying the experience of just focusing on playing one album at a time.