WHEN THE SPOTIFY APP TOLD ME Billie Eilish’s new album had landed, the announcement was surprisingly dictatorial: “Stream hit me hard and soft front-to-back now.” It wasn’t just the imperative that took me aback. It was the insistence I listen to the whole thing as, well, an album.
This is kind of counter to the whole promise of streaming, one of the benefits of which is that it turns all music into a pick ’n’ mix from which you can pluck only the tastiest morsels. Freed from the
