Elliot Jay Stocks is carrying out an experiment on distributing his upcoming music next year based on the following suggestion

musicians, I suggest this: release small and often. Put out a track — or small collections of tracks like EPs — on a regular basis. Seed them directly to your fans. Release sketches and demos and rough mixes and experiments. We no longer need to toil away for months or years at a time crafting a ‘finished’ album, because digital media — by its very nature — has destroyed the hitherto-held understanding of what ‘finished’ really is...
What this means is that everyone gets the same product — and that product is actually a series of regular digital releases and one physical release — but the earliest supporters get the reward of having to pay very little.

In this age of digital experimentation and pushing the boundaries in distribution mediums, music is only still in its early stages unlike magazine publishing which seemed to be the first to push through said boundaries thanks to tablet devices. 

I like what Elliot is doing, but I do agree with him that it will be hard to scale such a system. There will always be a need for a body willing to support new acts due to the high cost of recording said music. New acts usually do not have the required initial funds to get in a studio and record their first few tracks let alone an album. Using Kickstarter is great, but again only if enough people have heard your music previously and believe in you enough to pay early for your music and the perks attached. 

I do however completely agree with Elliot that the concept of the album is dead. This is why subscription music is so popular as it give you access to a whole bunch of singles whenever you want. I doubt most people listen to whole albums at a time (although I have no data to back it up except for my own usage of such services). 

I especially like this quote from Elliot

As a maker and publisher of any form of content that can be consumed — but most importantly distributed — digitally, freeing oneself of the business models inherited (by default) from the physical world is perhaps the most liberating step one might take.

I feel however that the real change in music will come when it is cheap to make and record a song or album (I thought it was already with the likes of things like Garageband but with artists still needing large advances, I must be wrong). As this cost reduces, more and more artists will be able to afford making music on their own and with the digital distribution already in place, they will be able to start lean like any other startup and hope they make it to critical mass.

I will be watching to see how his experiment plays out. Good luck Elliot