[meaty]

Just pirate it then.

To be honest, I download the track elsewhere always and pay for it if I think it's worth it and delete it if it's not.

You can't tell much from a 30 second clip most of the time, especially when the motivation is still to produce albums filled with padding (shit).

They need to just release singles and do away with the whole album principle.

As for quality - if you want that, you need to buy the damn CD and rip it how you want. Most of the decent quality mp3 rips are rubbish enough to notice if you have a high end setup but for casual/normal users and ears, it's fine.

[entropy_]

I honestly like the album format. But then, that's because most artists I really like tend to have coherent albums that are best listened to as a whole(eg, Pink Floyd or Dream Theater). I agree that for most music the album format doesn't make sense. But for some, a set of 5 minute singles just doesn't do it for me, I like longer pieces that all tie in together.

[meaty]

I'll give you that for pink Floyd :)

Perhaps they should ship as one mp3 with a cue file?

[Kudos]

The clips have been 90 seconds for a long time.

[meaty]

Usually the worst 90 second example which is my point.