Chinese Democracy is pretty much the last Old Media album we’ll ever contemplate in this context—it’s the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file. This is the end of that.

Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy at The A.V. Club

At first blush, I’m inclined to agree, but if Klosterman were giving a job talk, I would have a barrage of questions. I presume that he’s limiting this assertion to mainstream, major-label records, so the artisanal indie-rock artists that come to mind probably don’t count. I’m sure “rock artisans” will continue to make albums or digital song cycles for generations to come. However, I do think there are still musicians that are touchstones for the Baby Boomers or Generation X that still have the cultural and market power to put out an event album. If Bob Dylan releases another album, I suspect it will be greeted with substantial media fanfare and physical CD copies will fly off the shelves. I’m at a bit of a loss to think of figures for my generation: Kurt Cobain is dead and Trent Reznor has wholeheartedly embraced digital distribution and unbundling. Two album-oriented bands come to mind, The Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, but I’m not sure how to gauge how mainstream these bands are. What I do suspect is that rock is only a niche audience for generations younger than mine, and Klosterman is right – pop music going forward will largely be a matter of discrete hip-hop or electronic tracks bought over the cloud.