Yeah it seems like they made it worse, and I blame all the people who complained about the old method. Now you can't delete songs, nor can you download specific songs (only entire playlists, albums or artists) without playing them, which I used to always do so I'd have songs queued up without any delay in playback.
The old way worked just fine, but people complained that they couldn't technically stream songs (though in practice it was pretty much the same thing). Now Apple has given the appearance of streaming, which will probably quell the complaints even though functionality has been lost.