I'm not sure if the change is necessarily a bad thing.   Too often I've received CD's that have been primarily filler. One or two good songs and then a collection of ho-hum songs.

I think one of the good things about the digital age is that we do not need to wait until an artist has a full album worth of material. Tom Paxton and John McCutcheon are examples of two artist who release topical songs on their websites - songs that are timely and worth sharing today, not in 10 months after an entire album has been recorded, mixed, marketeted, etc.