Truth is their music sucks arses. Albums are for music worthy of listening to.
Uh... because organizing a dozen or so tracks into a coherent body of work is... work?
Uh... because organizing 10 or so songs into a coherent body actually means *work*?
The first thing we did was Ctrl+F the article for charli_xcx to make sure she was in there!
That's fine. Pop single charts are a homogeneous wreck of songs sitting there for weeks on end. At least it allows other artists to have their moments in the album charts.
Why do we hear this bullshit every couple years?! 'Circumnavigating the music industry middlemen' my ass. You mean work with the same huge media conglomerates that have ran shit for decades? It's all through major labels, even Betty who works with Sony. Fake news for fake music.
You failed to mention CalvinHarris who seems in no hurry to put out an album and just releases banger after banger...
because they don‘t make money with albums. they‘re not in it for the music
Recording have become loss leaders. Very few acts - as The Beatles, Steely Dan etc - could survive on the revenue of albums themselves since they are so easily copied without sound quality loss. It's an economics issue.