Releasing music in albums. Pros/Cons?

[kári]

I was just looking at the DT forum and realized that my interest has massively waned, now ADTOE is a few months old. It's a great album, but now comes that long lull before the next album comes out.
Which got me thinking: Do the benefits of releasing music all in one chunk really outweigh the benefits of releasing songs peu a peu?

On the pro-album side, there's of course the ability to release an opus at a time, where you can tie songs together and make it a giant epic.

On the con-album side, I find there's more. You end up waiting years for the next release, by which time the music business and the audience might have moved on, past you as an artist.
Then, you're pressured to produce an artificial amount of music, an amount that is plain dominated by technology (the CD capacity). The result: Lots of filler music.

In my opinion, if bands started switching to song-based releases they could
a) make more money overall (people are usually willing to pay more money piecemeal than in one chunk)
b) keep their audience engaged (a song every few months)
c) have people show up for their shows more (no point in seeing a band twice for the same album, but when there's two new songs out since the last time you saw them, you might be tempted).

Thoughts?

rumborak

You can't really make more money, though, if you write long-form prog.   Take my band's debut, for example.  6 tracks.  74 minutes of music.  Three tracks exceed 15 minutes.  Selling those as individual tracks is a non-starter.

Why?