Other forms: albums
An album is a collection of songs released together as one work. A debut album, the new album, listen to the whole album.
The other sense is a book of blank pages for keeping things in: a photo album, a stamp album. The music sense came from that — early records came in bound sets of sleeves that looked exactly like a photo album, and the name stayed when the format changed. Note single and EP, which are the shorter formats, and that in the streaming era album is still the unit artists work in even though nothing is bound together any more.
1nounalbumA collection of songs released together.
“The album came out in the spring and sold nothing.”
2nounbookA book with blank pages for photographs or stamps.
“There are six photo albums under the stairs.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
album is a collection.
Latin album meant a blank white tablet on which public notices were written — from albus, white, the same root as albino and albumen. An album has always been something blank waiting to be filled.
Latin
album
English, today
album
Built from
Borrowed from Latin album. Latin album (“blank white writing tablet”), from albus (“white”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA