Well, That Was Quick - Bored Already, Not Going To Keep Apple Music

[boltjames]

That is completely untrue.

When I as 20, my musical taste was near-completely limited to "West Coast Rock" and Soul. Then I discovered Ska when I was in my early thirties. It's now one of my favorite genres, and that includes stuff like Japanese girl band ska, which is about as far away from "West Coast Rock" as it can get.

Really, really, really, please speak for yourself.

No, it opens me up to the stuff that I usually wouldn't buy. Why is that automatically mediocre? I am currently listening to stuff that I never felt like buying, but it's certainly not mediocre. In fact, it's probably someone else's favorite music.

I can now listen to hundreds of album cuts from great jazz musicians. Before, I would have had to buy a hundred albums from these musicians to do the same thing, hoping to find some gems on these albums. I didn't care enough for jazz to do that. But I am sure that there are people here who'd tell me that I was missing out on some of the greatest music ever made. Well, perhaps they are right, but there's simply a limit to what I am willing to spend on music. That doesn't mean that the stuff that I am not going to buy is not good.

Everything you are mentioning about "discovery" is available to you right now, for free, and has been for years. There is more discovery at our fingertips than ever before.

Apple Music is nothing new. It's a conglomeration of Spotify, Pandora, Twitter, YouTube, and iTunes. The world didn't stop revolving because of these services in 2012 so why should it stop now? Because Apple put it into one bloated app? Heavy downloaders and 'discoverers' can enjoy Apple Music and if they want to ditch Spotify and the other services that's cool. But for the average listener, this is just yet another way that Apple is trying to re-purpose iTunes and it's not good for the consumer; it's good for Apple and the record companies. And that's counter to what Apple used to be like. We're all about over-paying for quality. This isn't quality. It's just saturation.

BJ

 

[turbineseaplane]

Guys...isn't this getting a touch overboard?

I've now spent more time reading this thread than I did using Apple Music before "ensuring auto renew was turned off" and moving on with life.

Haha

 

[MentalFloss]

Can you name 1 band that made its last record and went undiscovered in 1985 that turns out to be truly fantastic today? In the history of recorded music, almost 100 years, has there been a band so terrific that the world simply overlooked and decades later then discovered? Nope. You're looking for the Loch Ness Monster. You should stop.

I am not looking for bands that nobody has discovered yet. I am quite satisfied with finding bands that I had not discovered yet. Like I said in another post here, I discovered Ska at some point in my life. That's a genre that has been around for 60 years or so and that has been liked or loved by many people before me, but not by me, because I only saw the little bits and pieces that were floating to the surface here and there. I can't even think of many true ska songs that made it into the charts or on pop radio. At some point, I heard a song by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra while visiting Japan, and I was hooked. And then I started going back to discover older ska music that I had never heard of before. So I did discover the Loch Ness Monster. So I am living proof that you are wrong.

Other example: I discovered Free Design in an Apple Music playlist. That's music from the 60s. Previously completely unknown to me. Now their Best Of album is in my library.

And having said that, I am not only talking about old music. There is a lot of new music being released nowadays outside of the charts that I am sure is worth discovering.

 

[boltjames]

I think very few people still pay data charges when listening to music at home. And for listening to music outside your home, there is the offline listening option.

Welcome to 2015 and the world of mobile. The only real demographic that Apple can feast on here is the 12 to 25 year old crowd, they're the only people who haven't discovered Bruce Springsteen at this point, and they are completely absorbed by their iPhone's and don't listen to music any other way.

People are committed to much higher payments on a lot of stuff. I pay nearly $1000 a month for my apartment. Own a car? Well, say hello to rather high monthly payments for the rest of your life. Want cable TV service? That's more than $10 a month for most people. Want to use a mobile phone for more than pure reachability? Monthly payments! And so on. No idea why music should take a lower priority there.

The difference is that the Music business model already exists and is pro-consumer. We hear new music for free (Radio) and we pay for what we want to archive (iTunes). Apple Music and the rest are trying to break that model for ones we don't like such as the ones you mention above. Cable TV is the perfect analogy. You probably watch less than 2% of what's available to you and yet you pay 100% for it. I've gone years without watching a single show I enjoy on Food Network, Lifetime, Oxygen, BBC America and scores of others because they're bundled with AMC which I have to have.

As for your apartment, would you be pleased if the model changed to you paying $1000 a month and in some months you have no heat and in some months you have no electricity? Lease a car? What if the model changed and that $500 payment got you into a BMW for two months and then a Kia for the other thirty-four? Because that's what Apple Music is.

BJ

 

[MentalFloss]

Everything you are mentioning about "discovery" is available to you right now, for free, and has been for years. There is more discovery at our fingertips than ever before.

Yes, thanks to streaming.

So we all actually agree. What are we still discussing about?

 

[MacFan1957]

So after the rush of the first few days of having a huge catalog of music at my fingertips and asking Siri to "play songs by Olivia Newton John" just for the fun of it, that novelty has worn off and it turns out that if there was any older music that I just had to hear I already own it.

Apple Watch and Apple Music. Not very impressed in the post-Jobs era.

BJ

Simply Pathetic!

 

[MentalFloss]

Welcome to 2015 and the world of mobile. The only real demographic that Apple can feast on here is the 12 to 25 year old crowd, they're the only people who haven't discovered Bruce Springsteen at this point, and they are completely absorbed by their iPhone's and don't listen to music any other way.

I am not sure if you realize that iPhones have WLAN and can be connected to a WLAN router at home, which in turn can be connected to DSL, Cable Internet, etc.

When you complain about data charges, I think you complain about a problem that very very few people actually have.

The difference is that the Music business model already exists and is pro-consumer. We hear new music for free (Radio)

Radio is a) not free but ad-financed and b) not comparable with a random-access service like streaming. On radio, I hear exactly what a specific DJ wants me to hear, and if I don't like a song, I still have to wait for the next one.

You probably watch less than 2% of what's available to you and yet you pay 100% for it. I've gone years without watching a single show I enjoy on Food Network, Lifetime, Oxygen, BBC America and scores of others because they're bundled with AMC which I have to have.

It really seems to bug you that you have to pay even if you don't like 98% of the stuff on TV. I guess that's the main difference here: I am a glass-half-full person. I don't pay 100% for shows I don't watch. I pay for the 2% shows that I want to watch. I evaluate the value of cable to me based on how much I want to watch and how much I am willing to pay for it. I have a very very extensive DVD/Blu-ray collection and I still pay for cable, because that evaluation yielded a positive result.

As for your apartment, would you be pleased if the model changed to you paying $1000 a month and in some months you have no heat and in some months you have no electricity? Lease a car? What if the model changed and that $500 payment got you into a BMW for two months and then a Kia for the other thirty-four? Because that's what Apple Music is.

So your main argument is FUD? Who knows, your electricity company might decide to discontinue service to you tomorrow or they might go bankrupt. Or your landlord might sell your house and the new landlord decides to send in some unpleasant people to get rid of you. Your CDs might rot and your hard drives and backups might all fail at the same time. Yes, something might could would perhaps possibly under certain circumstances happen on a certain date in a specific kind of future. You state "that's what Apple Music is" based on predictions for the future that have practically no basis in anything whatsoever. I can state "That's what Apple Music is not" and my argument is just as valid as yours.

 

[johngordon]

Welcome to 2015 and the world of mobile. The only real demographic that Apple can feast on here is the 12 to 25 year old crowd, they're the only people who haven't discovered Bruce Springsteen at this point, and they are completely absorbed by their iPhone's and don't listen to music any other way.

So if they stumble across, and decide they like Springsteen they can download a bunch of his albums to their phones on the wifi at home, and not have to worry about data charges.

The difference is that the Music business model already exists and is pro-consumer. We hear new music for free (Radio) and we pay for what we want to archive (iTunes). Apple Music and the rest are trying to break that model for ones we don't like such as the ones you mention above.

Or, if we have a streaming subscription, we can also listen to lots of albums that we might not have bought.

You_still_keep_ignoring_this.

Cable TV is the perfect analogy. You probably watch less than 2% of what's available to you and yet you pay 100% for it. I've gone years without watching a single show I enjoy on Food Network, Lifetime, Oxygen, BBC America and scores of others because they're bundled with AMC which I have to have.

As for your apartment, would you be pleased if the model changed to you paying $1000 a month and in some months you have no heat and in some months you have no electricity? Lease a car? What if the model changed and that $500 payment got you into a BMW for two months and then a Kia for the other thirty-four? Because that's what Apple Music is.

BJ

With cable, you may well be paying for all of it.

But your mistake again seems out be some bizarre notion that people might ever want to watch all of it.

The chances are that for a lot of people, even if they only watch 2% of what's on cable, their cable subscription will still be a lot cheaper than buying everything they watch on DVD / Bluray or digital download.

And either way, I think there's a difference between music and tv - people can listen to an album far more readily than they can watch a season of a tv show.

 

[johngordon]

I am not sure if you realize that iPhones have WLAN and can be connected to a WLAN router at home, which in turn can be connected to DSL, Cable Internet, etc.

When you complain about data charges, I think you complain about a problem that very very few people actually have.

Exactly.

It seems a bit like looking at the price of a television or washing machine, and then factoring in the additional cost of the electricity needed to power them, and pinning that on Sony or Electrolux.

But who would do that?

 

[shandyman]

Yes, just yes. This service exists today. The promise of "access to 30 Million Songs!" has been around since Marconi, I've got about 20 of 'em in my office and home and car, it's called "Radio". Streaming is Radio. It's FM on steroids. It's music you're free to listen to but you can't own. It doesn't get people very excited.

Streaming and radio are not the same. You've rendered all of your points moot, as pure just presenting your own opinion and made up facts in your head as truths. Your opinion does not equal the facts for everyone.

And that's awesome. You and the other 1% of the population that are fully open to hundreds of different Genre's of music after 34 years of life on Earth are to be commended for your openness and are probably the only consumers that can make good use out of Apple Music and it's $120 cost.

BJ

Source for the 1%? And why the sudden change from 0% that you stated previously?

You're really coming across as bitter that people are proving your 'facts' as wrong. Maybe you need a break to calm down and think about things?[/QUOTE]

 

[kmj2318]

You put a higher value on albums than the vast majority of artists who created them. Unless you're listening to concept albums or classical music, 99% of the albums are just a bunch of songs thrown into a certain order that ranges from "We spent a few minutes thinking about it and then the label overruled us anyway" to "Completely random". Artists either have 15 demos, and the producer and/or the label pick the ones they consider the best ten, or they have 5 songs and then try hard to come up with a bunch of fillers to be able to release a complete album, so there is no over-arching concept there. Even for my favorite musicians, I have to acknowledge that some songs on their albums are really filler material, and I think very few musicians really think of their albums as "complete coherent works of art".

Yes, there was a time in the 60s when albums became more important and bands moved away from albums containing singles + fillers. But still, unless it was a concept album, the musicians rarely sat down and thought first "Ok, how do we structure this album? What songs do we write for the beginning, the middle and the end?" And even if they did, it didn't seem to bother them when people "shuffled" their songs. Or did Styx object to "Mr. Roboto" being released from "Kilroy Was Here"? Heck, even with classical music, I don't feel like I must listen to the whole piece every time. I listen to the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, without feeling that I first have to sit through the heard-it-much-too-often first movement.

I think you really interpret some value into albums that wasn't intended to be there in the first place. Would be nice if artists and producers viewed albums in such a way. But really, they don't.

I agree that not all do. But the ones that make great albums care about the album format. I guess it's the type of albums I listen to. Off the top of my head, albums from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Kendrick Lamar, Pink Floyd, Agalloch, Bjork, Swans, Madvillain, Tim Hecker have clear conceptual arcs to all their albums. Even good albums that are not conceptual still have a sonic arc. Albums from Bowie, Dylan, Radiohead, Opeth, Kanye West, Miles Davis, King Crimson, Elliot Smith are complete projects. There's a clear beginning, middle and end. I guess the typical jam band or pop album won't, but in that case I'm not interested. If an artist uses filler to fill out an album, then it's simply not a good album to me. I'm not going to pick and choose from a bad album even if it has good songs. There's plenty enough artists for me that take albums seriously, even if most don't.

 

[zhenya]

It keeps on recommending me albums I've got in my library.

It's by design. In theory, if it's in your library, you might be interested in it. The point of the For You section is to mix random selections of new and old favorites based on what you have been currently listening to, perhaps with some oddballs thrown in there. If you have ever opened up iTunes, scrolled through for a while without finding anything in your library to listen to, then settled for 'shuffle all songs' and suddenly found all sorts of stuff you'd forgotten about, or just wouldn't have otherwise picked that day, try out the For You section (once you've spent at least a token amount of time tuning the service to your taste). I nearly always start with For You because it's much more likely to offer me something of interest than just scrolling through my library, or trying to pick something from the overwhelming list available to stream.

I will never like Reggae except on a beach in the summer. I will never like Jazz except at a dinner party. I abhor World Music as much as I dislike people who drive a Toyota Prius. The greatest Latin song ever written might be unleashed on the planet tomorrow and I won't care one iota. It's not what I'm into.

No one "Genre surfs" once they turn 20.

Wrong once again. With comments like these, it's no wonder your tastes have become so calcified. Bet you are a hoot at a party.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

It keeps on recommending me albums I've got in my library.

I've taken this to mean that I have impeccable taste in music, something that I've been telling the wife for years.

 

[navaira]

It's by design. In theory, if it's in your library, you might be interested in it.

I am waiting for the day it recommends me an album I am actually playing offline at the same time. Today it gave me "Introduction to Faithless". I have 113 songs by Faithless in my library, so yeah, I need an introduction.

I thought the whole point of integration between My Music and Apple Music was so that Apple Music could go through my library and then show me stuff I don't know yet but judging by my library I would like. Now, I would pay for THAT. If the service keeps on suggesting me albums I own AND play often, I don't see a point in that. Perhaps if it suggested I revisit an album I last played three years ago, yes, but not one I played yesterday.

 

[shandyman]

I am waiting for the day it recommends me an album I am actually playing offline at the same time. Today it gave me "Introduction to Faithless". I have 113 songs by Faithless in my library, so yeah, I need an introduction.

I thought the whole point of integration between My Music and Apple Music was so that Apple Music could go through my library and then show me stuff I don't know yet but judging by my library I would like. Now, I would pay for THAT. If the service keeps on suggesting me albums I own AND play often, I don't see a point in that. Perhaps if it suggested I revisit an album I last played three years ago, yes, but not one I played yesterday.

It is meant to learn, I believe. So it won't be instantaneous though.

 

[turbineseaplane]

If the service keeps on suggesting me albums I own AND play often, I don't see a point in that.

Totally agree - Not sure I need a recommendation engine to "look at what I play often and also own" and "recommend that I might like it"... lol

 

[zhenya]

I am waiting for the day it recommends me an album I am actually playing offline at the same time. Today it gave me "Introduction to Faithless". I have 113 songs by Faithless in my library, so yeah, I need an introduction.

I thought the whole point of integration between My Music and Apple Music was so that Apple Music could go through my library and then show me stuff I don't know yet but judging by my library I would like. Now, I would pay for THAT. If the service keeps on suggesting me albums I own AND play often, I don't see a point in that. Perhaps if it suggested I revisit an album I last played three years ago, yes, but not one I played yesterday.

I suspect that it is still adapting to you, and that the algorithms and selection methods are still far from perfected. I had over a year of daily Beats Music use to get me started with, so the suggestions are generally pretty spot-on for me. Sometimes it gets stuck in a genre that I just dabbled in for a bit too long, and sometimes it gives me those same introductory playlists for things I obviously don't need an introduction to, but on the whole, the recommendation system is so much better than any of the others I've tried, that I can live with that.

 

[MentalFloss]

It's by design. In theory, if it's in your library, you might be interested in it. The point of the For You section is to mix random selections of new and old favorites based on what you have been currently listening to, perhaps with some oddballs thrown in there.

Ok, I can get what you are saying, but if it's done by design, then this design is broken. If I own every single album by a band or an artist, then I think the system would be smart enough to see that an "Intro to ..." Playlist is not the right thing for me. Then it would be much better to have a "Deep cuts by ..." or even better a "Music by and inspired by ..." playlist, kinda like the artist radio stations, but with the human touch that Apple advertised so heavily for Apple Music. As it is now, if I want to get music similar to a certain artist, I have to use the algorithm-created artist stations. No human curation there.

And frankly, the "Intro to ..." playlists suck. They should be called "Greatest Hits" playlists, because they always seem to contain just the hits, but that is in many cases not a representation of what the artist really is about. For example, I am a fan of Chicago. So I get an "Intro to Chicago" playlist. Yes, it's the same greatest hits that populate every hits compilation album. But Chicago has a background in jazz rock, and there are songs with latin influences, songs with heavy guitars, etc. If I want to give someone an intro to the band, I will not pull out only the greatest hits. It doesn't take a "human expert" to create that kind of a playlist. And it's the same for other artists.

The For You page currently consists of two types of playlists for me: Intros to my favorite bands and summaries of the genre that I have been listening to the last 24 hours or the timeframe that I have been listening to. I actually made a "Top Hits of 1979" playlist and listened to it, and the next day, For You suggested a 1979 playlist that was a near-complete subset of mine. Hey, I only just listened to "My Sharona"! Now I made a "R&B Hits" playlist. Now I get "intros" to Marvin Gaye, James Brown and the Temptations with all the hit songs that I have already added to the playlist. How about suggesting R&B/soul/funk artists that are not in my library? For You really places me in a very convenient "taste bubble".

The only "new stuff" I currently have in "For You" is a Jacques Lu Cont playlist, and that is a weird choice (though I still prefer weird over "heard it all before"). It would be great to get an indication where these suggestions actually come from.

 

[navaira]

I don't think that AM/iTunes mines data the way it should (or rather that I expected it to). It has access to my entire musical history. Acts I listen to, albums I prefer over others, play count, last played, star rating. When I first heard about AM I thought, oh my God, this is going to be incredible. I expected it to use all that data and come up with suggestions based on all that. It would be unbeatable. I would be begging them to take my money if in return I got recommendations of new acts I don't know that I would love.

This hasn't happened yet. I get playlists of acts I already know way too much about, albums I own or, even worse, Sting. (What in my library would make them think I would like to listen to Sting? Is it the thrash metal collection? Kylie's entire discography?) It does feel more personalised than Spotify's super-generic "Sunday morning" playlists (which will ALWAYS have something terrible on them, but ALWAYS) but it feels like it's personalised by someone really lazy. Someone who goes through my CD rack, picks something random and says "I bet you like this". Who looks at the S section, sees a record by Scissor Sisters and goes "I betcha will like Intro to Scissor Sisters!" missing the fact that record stands next to three more albums and ten CD singles.

By now I am 100% convinced the three-month trial is actually the DP beta 1, DP beta 2, public beta 1, etc. process, only using users as beta testers whether they like it or not. "We borked your entire library, replaced purchased music with DRM versions, live albums with studio versions, then gave all your Jennifer Lopez albums a picture of Insane Clown Posse as cover art? Whoopsie! Don't worry, 12.2.4 is going to repair some of those errors! Maybe." Perhaps by the end of the three month trial Apple Music does become the tool I imagined it would be. Perhaps not.

PS. MentalFloss, I'd like your post twice if I could.

 

[flur]

The best way to discover music on Apple Music is not the For You page with its oh-so-great human-curated playlists, but the artist radio stations.

THIS. I've found that AM is much better at this than any of the other services I've tried. Spotify seems to mix in only big, well-known songs to the stations I've created, and Tidal only cycles through a couple of other artists (3 at most in the stations I've created). AM gives me a large variety of artists, both well-known and lesser-known, and I generally like most of what gets played.

Since I'm not using iCML (due to library FUBARs), if I want to keep those great songs for offline playing, I have to buy them. I've bought more music in the last two weeks than I have in the rest of 2015 combined.

 

[navaira]

Actually I just thought "I'll give this a try" and tried with Apple Music and My Music, and clicking "New Station From Artist" causes... nothing.

Do those stations appear somewhere? They're not in Radio or For You tabs. Is this a new bug... I mean feature in 12.2.1?

 

[flur]

You put a higher value on albums than the vast majority of artists who created them. Unless you're listening to concept albums or classical music, 99% of the albums are just a bunch of songs thrown into a certain order that ranges from "We spent a few minutes thinking about it and then the label overruled us anyway" to "Completely random". Artists either have 15 demos, and the producer and/or the label pick the ones they consider the best ten, or they have 5 songs and then try hard to come up with a bunch of fillers to be able to release a complete album, so there is no over-arching concept there. Even for my favorite musicians, I have to acknowledge that some songs on their albums are really filler material, and I think very few musicians really think of their albums as "complete coherent works of art".

Yes, there was a time in the 60s when albums became more important and bands moved away from albums containing singles + fillers. But still, unless it was a concept album, the musicians rarely sat down and thought first "Ok, how do we structure this album? What songs do we write for the beginning, the middle and the end?" And even if they did, it didn't seem to bother them when people "shuffled" their songs. Or did Styx object to "Mr. Roboto" being released from "Kilroy Was Here"? Heck, even with classical music, I don't feel like I must listen to the whole piece every time. I listen to the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, without feeling that I first have to sit through the heard-it-much-too-often first movement.

I think you really interpret some value into albums that wasn't intended to be there in the first place. Would be nice if artists and producers viewed albums in such a way. But really, they don't.

My musician husband and all of his musician friends would disagree with you.

 

[flur]

Actually I just thought "I'll give this a try" and tried with Apple Music and My Music, and clicking "New Station From Artist" causes... nothing.

Do those stations appear somewhere? They're not in Radio or For You tabs. Is this a new bug... I mean feature in 12.2.1?

I've only done it on my phone. Usually the station just starts playing and it appears in the "Recently Played" section on the Radio tab.

 

[shandyman]

Ok, I can get what you are saying, but if it's done by design, then this design is broken. If I own every single album by a band or an artist, then I think the system would be smart enough to see that an "Intro to ..." Playlist is not the right thing for me. Then it would be much better to have a "Deep cuts by ..." or even better a "Music by and inspired by ..." playlist, kinda like the artist radio stations, but with the human touch that Apple advertised so heavily for Apple Music. As it is now, if I want to get music similar to a certain artist, I have to use the algorithm-created artist stations. No human curation there.

And frankly, the "Intro to ..." playlists suck. They should be called "Greatest Hits" playlists, because they always seem to contain just the hits, but that is in many cases not a representation of what the artist really is about. For example, I am a fan of Chicago. So I get an "Intro to Chicago" playlist. Yes, it's the same greatest hits that populate every hits compilation album. But Chicago has a background in jazz rock, and there are songs with latin influences, songs with heavy guitars, etc. If I want to give someone an intro to the band, I will not pull out only the greatest hits. It doesn't take a "human expert" to create that kind of a playlist. And it's the same for other artists.

The For You page currently consists of two types of playlists for me: Intros to my favorite bands and summaries of the genre that I have been listening to the last 24 hours or the timeframe that I have been listening to. I actually made a "Top Hits of 1979" playlist and listened to it, and the next day, For You suggested a 1979 playlist that was a near-complete subset of mine. Hey, I only just listened to "My Sharona"! Now I made a "R&B Hits" playlist. Now I get "intros" to Marvin Gaye, James Brown and the Temptations with all the hit songs that I have already added to the playlist. How about suggesting R&B/soul/funk artists that are not in my library? For You really places me in a very convenient "taste bubble".

The only "new stuff" I currently have in "For You" is a Jacques Lu Cont playlist, and that is a weird choice (though I still prefer weird over "heard it all before"). It would be great to get an indication where these suggestions actually come from.

'Intro To..' is basically 'Greatest Hits', but as a better name.

For me, the 'Intro to...' for artists I already have in my library are disappearing, being replaced with 'Deeper cuts'. I am also getting "Influences' playlist, which is something like what you're on about with the Chicago thing. I'm also getting playlists that are a mix of artists, some i have, some I don't have. In fact, I'm getting a lot of new playlists in the 'For You section that are wildly different to the bog standard 'Intro to' and 'Deep Cuts', that I was getting at launch.

Additionally, the 'New' Section is great, explore that, I've discovered more new music through that than other sections. There's the Editors playlists in there, plus the Curators ones. Some people seem to expect too much of a spoon feeding for this service, which may be a flaw from Apple, but maybe they didn't expect people to be so lazy.....

Actually I just thought "I'll give this a try" and tried with Apple Music and My Music, and clicking "New Station From Artist" causes... nothing.

Do those stations appear somewhere? They're not in Radio or For You tabs. Is this a new bug... I mean feature in 12.2.1?

The stations are under radio, the section that says 'Recently Played', that's on iOS and on iTunes.

 

[MentalFloss]

My musician husband and all of his musician friends would disagree with you.

Well, I never said that all albums are random compilations of whatever songs the artists just happened to have. And even the albums which are, often have at least a stylistic connection and represent where the artist at right now. Sure, there are lots of concept albums which are meant to be listened to in their entirety and albums which were planned out from the beginning. But these are the minority, by far. For example, what's the connection of "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" to the other songs on Queen's album "The Game"? The songs are so stylistically distinct, that they could have just as well appeared on another album. They were conceived by Deacon and Mercury, respectively, during the recording of the album, not as "These are great for the album" songs but as "These are great" songs, and they were accepted by the band and the producer - that's it. Still, I don't consider the album or the songs as "bad" just because they don't fit into some big master plan.

And for example "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by the Alan Parsons Project follows a coherent concept, yet I still listen to "The Raven" separately, and I don't feel that it loses any of its musical value without the rest of the album.