Front to back

I had a conversation the other night with a friend about music. He mentioned that the Smashing Pumpkin's album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the only CD that he could listen to from start to finish without skipping a track. It got me thinking about my own collection and which albums I enjoyed front to back without skips. With the advent of mp3 players and digital music this quality has become much less relevant. You can download the tracks you like a disregard everything else. With the emphasis on singles rather than full albums will this lead to more casual music fans who only know a couple of songs by an artist? Will the self life of musicians' be shorter because a single can only keep you in the limelight so long? Remember the Macarena or Who Let the Dogs Out. I wonder if at the next show I attend I will hear someone yell, "play that song that was featured on Itunes last week." I wonder if someday albums will disappear completely.