I don't only listen to top40 stuff pop music. I mostely listen to albums too. But let's face it, there's always some tracks that are better than others and some tracks are, well... plain crap.
One of the reasons I got an Empeg actually was to be able to only encode the things I like, so I wouldn't have to use the skip button as often.
I would love the possibility of being able to listen to an album and then just buy the tracks that I like. It's not because I like an artist that I like ALL his tracks. eg. I'm a big fan of the Dire Straits, but a track like "fade to black" is simply not my cup of tea so I don't encode it and I dont put it on my empeg. This doesn't mean I will only fill the empeg with the crowd pleasers like "money for nothing" or "sultans of swing", I also like the not so well known songs like "telegraph road" or "love over gold". What it comes down to is that it's all about tastes really, and you know what they say about that.

I also have a lot of CD singles. But it doesn't mean that if a track makes it to Cd single that it's automatically a commercial track. Far from it. Practically none of those singles even made it into the top40. In the last years I've also bought a lot of trance vinyl records, which I converted to Cd. All those records could be considered as singles, but I'm still very happy I bought them. They contain lovely full length versions of all those tracks I like.

As for the ""that song is awesome, but they suck" as you put it, well, this happens at least a few times a year to me. A good example would be "Drax Ltd III's Amphetamine", a great track, but all Drax'es other works is -dare I say it - pure shite. (or at least I think it is)