Quick Hits: The end of fall blockbuster albums; the most timeless songs; Internet radio as social experience

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Streaming may mean the end fall blockbuster albums: One of the biggest discussion points around the shift to streaming is how intensely it has changed the landscape of traditional album sales. Billboard recently examined a particular facet of that change: the fourth-quarter blockbuster album. Those fall album releases used to see a boost, thanks to their timing just ahead of the holiday shopping season, but labels may move away from that model now. “Giving the gift of a CD isn’t what it used to be,” Russ Crupnick of MusicWatch said. “To me, it increasingly makes sense to fill up more of the calendar to get attention for releases.”

A data scientist finds the most timeless songs: We love a good data visualization, and Matt Daniels has a good one. He used Spotify play counts to determine the most timeless songs from five and a half decades. The comparison of Spotify popularity against Billboard rankings is a fascinating walk down memory lane for anyone who likes cool data and music trends.

Wired on Internet radio comeback: In its reporting on the new Premium subscription at TuneIn, Wired discussed some of the broader trends in Internet radio that have made it successful of late. “I think part of what people are coming to realize is that a radio experience is a very social experience, whereas an on-demand music experience tends to be more of an entertainment experience,” TuneIn CEO John Donham told them. “When you listen to a human at the other end of a broadcast, you feel connected to them. You feel like you have company.”