To touch only a few of your points, my thought is that the hit single is just a marketing technique for selling albums. As a consumer, I prefer albums, as I'm likely to be more interested in the stuff that a radio station would never play. That being said, I can understand the desire of some consumers to just want to buy a single, especially at a reasonable price. I remember when I was younger and you could still buy singles at the local record store on cassette, 45, and even, occasionally, CD form, they cost about 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the album, so it made sense to me to just get the album and hope that there would be one or two more songs on there that I'd like. Of course, it helps that I usually have the preternatural sense to spot a single that has nothing else good on the album. The last time I was wrong about this (to my knowledge) was with Fastball and their album All the Pain Money Can Buy, about which I had come to that conclusion based on their first single off the album, but then they released a second which was also good. It turns out that the rest of the album is crap; they just happened to have two good singles instead of the more usual one.

Anyway, I know that with artists that produce good albums, I tend to prefer the non-single tracks more, and I don't want to see that go away. On the same note, it might help the one-hit wonders to be able to effectively sell individual songs, as I think many folks lose their taste after buying the album and finding that they only want to listen to the one song. If that's the only song they've got, then the desire for more might linger until they can produce another good song.

I find that good albums are cohesive these days. Maybe not so much as Dark Side of the Moon, etc., but stll a good amount. However, I think this is due to the fact that it's all made at one time with one producer and engineer than the similar artistic merit of the music behind it. Not that that's inherently invalid, but I usually find albums to be more entertaining to listen to than random songs. Three minutes isn't enough to cure me of my fix for whatever; I usually need 45 minutes or so. I also think that there's a real art in song placement on an album. The songs may not have a lot of inherent interrelation, but the pacing and flow from one song to the next can make or break an album for me. Also note that a lot of the big singles acts albums are an inchoerent mess, even if most of the songs themselves are good, and I think that's due to the mishmash of different production styles, as almost every song has a different producer/engineer credit from the others.

Personally, I also hate it when bands release songs that are only available in a specifc, non-album manner. I only have so much money to spend on music, and in the choice between buying something new for $15 versus spending $8 on a bunch of stuff I already have plus one new song, the new wins every time. Maybe this is the way that bands could release individual non-album songs -- have me download them for $1. I could do that.

I'm sure I've got more to say. I'll come back later.