On the one hand, Chinese Democracy, Axl Rose’s 15-year tortuous journey towards the Guns N’ Roses album he always felt he had in his brilliantly destructive brain, was released. On the other hand, a music software company came to our offices and showed us some software that analyses all the music on your hard drive, clusters it into a big cloud of tempos, styles, and other gubbins, then lets you choose your playlists visually by picking the clusters that interest you.

The two couldn’t have been further apart in what they represent. Think back to the albums that have defined a point in time, or a generation. Appetite For Destruction, Nevermind and Definitely Maybe jump to mind from my generation; yours will undoubtedly feature others, those bigger-than-music albums that everyone in school bought and listened to on loop till they knew every note and nuance.

Chinese Democracy is part of a dying breed. An album that is absolutely intended to be listened to as a whole, a selection of 14 songs painstakingly constructed and assembled into a single album, with track order, transitions, lyrical theme and album design all chosen for a reason. And – despite what reviewers pining for a 20-year-old sound may tell you – it’s fascinating. A huge array of styles and tempos, with heavy rock giving way to piano ballads, and with most tracks throwing in more styles in five minutes than Coldplay will manage in a career.

As Axl has surely already discovered, though, MP3 players and their personal playlists have no respect for any of this. A quick look at the Chinese Democracy iTunes page shows that you can download the tracks individually, and that the ratio of those downloading the title track (and first single) to those downloading the other album tracks is depressingly huge.

Do you think Katy Perry spent 15 years recording an opera of musical masterpieces to best complement I Kissed A Girl before she aired it in public?

No, she didn’t because she didn’t have to. Thousands of people can happily download her one popular song without having to acknowledge the existence of the other twelve tracks, and still make money for her record label. She could almost not have bothered with the album at all, but as it probably only took a week to write and record, the label can’t lose by putting it out.

The emphasis on individual tracks rather than albums is bad enough for the industry, but playlists are making it worse. If Katy Perry on repeat hasn’t driven you to lop your own ears off with a rusty kitchen knife, your MP3 player will recommend similar tracks, also randomly plucked from their own album line-ups. It can watch which tracks you listen to and which tracks you skip, further driving you towards the big singles, particularly as many obscure album tracks aren’t instantly recognisable – or indeed catchy – when heard in isolation.

Then there’s the playlist based on genre or tempo. The logic is terrible – I like Frank Sinatra so I must also like some Butlins crooner off X Factor strangling a cover version; I like the plodding pace of a Radiohead wrist-slitter so I must also like Leonard Cohen.

You may think that by finding more songs like your favourites you’re broadening your musical tastes, but you’re doing the opposite. You’re becoming someone who likes to listen to what iTunes thinks is “Alternative Rock” but not “Alternative Pop/Rock”; someone who likes Apple’s “Punk Revival” but not “Punk Rock”. Here’s another band that’s probably not as good as the one whose album you haven’t finished listening to yet, enjoy!

Don’t get me wrong, genuinely useful features like Apple’s Genius Playlists can throw up some great bands to try from outside your own collection; but it’s the opting for personal playlists over the intended form, the focus on the track rather than the album, which means we’ll likely never see another record with the social impact of old.

I realise this is merely my Luddite opinion – I know several PC Pro colleagues listen to their music in precisely this modern way and disagree with me entirely – but if they just chose an album and listened to it from start to finish once in a while I’m sure they’d be surprised by how many bands do more than just hit singles.