I am Kyle's self-indulgence

I saw on the All Songs Considered Blog that Thom Yorke recently suggested Radiohead may be done recording albums.

His statement isn't very surprising, considering that several years ago he had said the band wanted to switch to releasing EPs instead of LPs. As it turned out, their next release was still a full-length album, but was distributed exclusively from the band's website, at whatever price fans wanted to pay.

So perhaps there's still something to this announcement, as Radiohead continues to lead the way to a new distribution model. It certainly makes sense if you consider that we're headed toward an era of containerless digital music. Downloading individual songs has been growing more common and the 12-track album is becoming a relic of a previous time.

I find myself unwilling to let go, though. When Radiohead originally announced their intent to release EPs, I wondered if that method would be as much fun to listen to as an album. I'm wondering that even more so with the prospect that we could be getting nothing but individual songs from now on.

Most bands release a new album about every two years or so, and a typical album is around 12 tracks. That comes out to about one song every two months. So let's assume that every 2 months Radiohead makes a new song available for download at their website, and they maintain that pace for 2 years. At the end of that time they still would have released 12 songs, but getting them in increments just doesn't seem as satisfying to me as if I heard them released together, as a package, on a single day.

When I heard Radiohead's new song, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)," I was not very excited, and I've had a similar reaction when bands I love have released single songs in the past. If they were part of a larger album I might like them a lot better, but standing by themselves they seem somehow inferior, and less worthy of my dollar.

Perhaps it's just what I grew up with, and I've been trained to believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm afraid that what Radiohead is considering may really be the future of music. And in my head, I know it makes sense: in an era of containerless music there is no reason to have to bundle a dozen or more songs together. But I still can't help but feel sad at the though of no more albums.