The live album was once a standard part of a career and is now rare. Its disappearance follows from the fact that everything it used to provide is now available elsewhere for nothing.
It existed to sell an experience nobody could see
For most of recorded music history, a concert was unrepeatable and unrecorded from the audience's side. A live album was the only way to hear what a band sounded like on stage.
It also documented arrangements that differed from the studio versions, extended sections and audience response.
All of that had scarcity value. The record was evidence of something the listener could not otherwise access, and for anyone who had not attended a show it was the only version of the band as a performing act.
Footage removed the scarcity entirely
Almost every show of any size is now recorded from the floor and uploaded within hours. Multiple angles of the same song are available before the tour bus leaves.
That coverage is free, immediate and visual, which an audio-only release cannot match on any of the three.
The product survives only where the recording is significantly better than anything a phone captures, which is a narrow case.
Streaming does not reward alternate versions
A listener searching for a song is offered the version they know. Live recordings sit lower in results and rarely enter playlists.
Plays therefore concentrate on studio recordings, and a live version competes with the artist's own catalogue rather than adding to it.
Under a per-stream model, releasing a second version of a song you already have in the catalogue splits attention without increasing it.
The production cost never fell
A releasable concert recording requires multitrack capture, a mobile setup, and substantial mixing time afterwards. Crowd noise and stage bleed make the mix harder than a studio session, not easier.
Several nights are usually recorded so that a usable performance can be assembled. That is real expenditure against a product with declining demand.
Labels compare that cost against a studio release and the comparison does not favour the concert.
Where the form survives
Live recordings persist as contractual obligations, as archive releases from historic tours, and as filmed concert events that are sold as films rather than albums.
The filmed version works because it competes with footage on its own terms, offering angles and sound that a phone cannot.
The audio-only live album has no such argument left, which is why it has quietly left release schedules. Nothing was announced and nothing was decided; the product simply stopped being commissioned once its advantage disappeared.