I thought he said "max is our producer now"? On Everyday Life Max was probably a (co-)producer who comes in when the song is almost done, similar to how Rami was used in the Gaga Ft Ariana song (article on that process online, also on the recent 47min podcast with rami of which i forgot the name he talked about the process).
I think albums are outdated in a sense, considering that youth behaves different now than I did as a kid in the 90's who recorded albums on tapes and later on cd, then napstar bulk download came in to overload hard discs. The streaming platforms (deezer, spotify, youtube music etc.) arrange a behaviour that is more aimed at playlists, rather than albums in general I think. So from the perspective of "new kids" I think albums are becoming less popular. Lots of 25 year olds don't even know about the practice of downloading actual data on a harddisc with software (napstar, kazaa, limewire were some. Currently soulseek is the one im using). On the other hand, albums are less outdated for my age group, say 26 years old +. But from major label perspective we are not as relevant to them as we once were. Also consider the fact that people bought albums because of one or a few songs on it. the other songs were just filling up the album, so artists could get away with selling average songs together with their hit. Now there is no need to get the song by buying the album. You can just select the song, play it and move on. Back in the early 00's with mini discs (was just as worse as copying a tape) and later mp3 players such as ipod it was also possible to make playlists with favorites, but it was kind of limited because updating it constantly was really a task. This streaming age has brought us total flexibility in selecting songs and we are never again stuck on the playlist i made a week ago for my ipod or for my cd that has only 80 minutes of music on it, walking around with maps filled with cd's. We don't even have to make playlists ourselves because there are a bunch of people who get paid to make playlists weekly, or even daily with all the new stuff in the genre that you like. Perfect for people, no time is lost, just click play without having to do any work. This landscape makes albums irrelevant and myself, I haven't played filler material of new released albums. I only play the singles. So I have changed as well, due to the flexibilty spotify provides me on my desktop pc. No more browsing through windows explorer going through maps I sorted per year and searching for music. Just spotify search and see everything right in front of me.
