Hi all,
I'm the OP. Could we please try to keep things civil rather than trolling each other? Responding to other comments, my feeling is that calls for a class-action lawsuit are a bit over the top. Yes, I don't like the addition of unrequested content to our accounts without an option to opt out or to delete it. It's one of the reasons I started this thread. But as others have mentioned this is a volunteer community, and I think the best way to get Apple to change things is to contact them and give feedback directly, since the problem is out of the capabilities of anyone here to solve; this link is one means to give feedback (that I was directed to by an Apple Support rep when asking how to best do so): http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
To others with this problem, the status is:
1. The album can be 'hidden' from our playlists using steps as shown by turingtest2 and others in this thread.
2. However, you cannot fully delete it from your account (it always remains 'in the cloud').
3. Apple Support either cannot or will not fully delete it from your account (based on email and phone conversations I and others have had).
So the summary is that the album cannot be fully deleted from your account (only 'hidden' - not the same as full deletion - from playlists and devices).