Never mind the singles, here’s the album

The record industry is to launch a National Album Day to introduce the format to younger fans.

A week-long celebration of the UK’S love for the album starts on Oct 13 as the long player celebrates its 70th anniversary. There will be retail events, online listening parties and a social media campaign, which will invite people to nominate and share their most inspirational albums.

At 3.33pm on National Album Day, fans, shops, radio stations and public spaces will be invited to play their favourite album in full.

Agood single is a fun jaunt but a good album is a goose-pimpling journey. British music lovers are buying fewer of the latter, though, and the industry has responded by announcing the first-ever National Album Day. On October 13, radio stations will play their favourite albums; fans will nominate their most cherished LPS on social media and artists will wax lyrical about the “purpose and meaning” of the album to millennial audiences. Even in the era of streaming and playlists, albums are irreplaceable. Surely it is better to let the artist guide us through the meticulously curated corridors of their artistic brilliance than, in the name of liberating “consumer choice”, lurch queasily from Black Sabbath to a Beethoven symphony, listening to our own klutzy “personalised” musical assemblages.