As an album-listener, nearly all of my playlists on my iPod and phone are based on that fact. Album playlists typically are made with all session songs in mind, and this is a tactic I've done since the early 00's before mp3s got hugely popular. I used to mix songs with new crossfades and burn them onto CD-r's for personal listening, essentially making my own playlists (as much as 80 minutes could fit). With mp3s now, I can do so much more in terms of creating a "complete album" playlist.
For bands, I tend to group chunks of their albums into "Eras" or "Phases" of their history, listening to those groups of albums in chronological order. Some examples include:
-The Beatles: I have playlists by year, which includes albums and songs released in a single year as ONE playlist, but also chunks of albums as playlists
-Rush: the obvious one, 5 sets of albums in their "Sectors", Rush to 2112, AFTK to MP, SIG to HYF, Presto to TFE, and VT to CA (sans Feedback cuz...it's Feedback)
-King Crimson: Again, another one with eras, so the first four albums, then the 3 Wetton-Era albums, then the 3 Belew-Era albums of the 80's, then everything after that.
There are hundreds of similar playlists on my iPod, but they're all separated into a single band. Rarely do I ever find myself wanting to listen to more than one band at a time, unless it's a collection of singles or various covers, like a playlist of Classic Prog Songs covered by Modern Prog Artists: "Starless" by Neal Morse, "The Cinema Show" by The Flower Kings, "La Villa Strangiato" from the Working Man Tribute, etc. etc.
Otherwise, the majority of my playlists are just albums (with some non-album tracks and b-sides mixed in, where applicable). I list them by "Band/Artist - Number (typically equating album number, debuts = 1, pre-debut demos = 0, between-album EPs or live albums get an X.5 - then album title", like so:
DT 01 - WDADU
DT 02 - IAW
DT 02.5 - LATM Expanded
DT 03 - Awake
DT 04 - FII
DT 04.5 - OIALT Complete
DT 05 - SFAM
... ... ...and so on and so forth
The music-by-year-of-release idea intrigues me, because I have kept lists of albums I have bought and/or listened to by year over the last 7 or 8 years, so it'd be fun to go back and put those albums into a playlist based on when each was released, and relive that "Year of Music"!
-Marc.