Yeah, the fact of the matter is that album covers are pieces of marketing designed to reflect the music in some way, so to a certain extent you can judge an album by its cover.

I wish I could know how many people bought it because they thought it was something more fitting to the cover. A pretty good troll.

I like how everyone is smiling but Genesis P. Orridge is standing a bit back so you don't really look at him at first and his face is the real album.

I've lost count of how many albums I've listened to solely based on the album cover. Makes for some interesting discoveries.

It's a solid percentage of the stuff I find.

Album covers are a perfectly legitimate thing to judge off of.

Album covers are still displayed on review sites and Spotify, so you'll still have that as a thing that can pull you towards an album if it's got an interesting cover.

I use this a lot for music discovery. Many of my most recent favorites can be traced back to this website:

https://www.allmusic.com/newreleases/editorschoice
&
https://www.allmusic.com/newreleases

Album covers factor in to what I click on. Totally admit that.

I like 80's KISS a lot.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sBhPYbq5S3E/hqdefault.jpg

It's not either/or imo. If album art is the only selling point that you need then you're probably not in it for the music anyways. It's a relevant component though when figuring out what to listen to (even if it's just 30 seconds on Youtube).