MasterOLightning said:
I guess you have to ask, what was the ratio of quality to shit releases for previous years as compared to now. I don't know those figures because I have better things to do during the day but lets say that there is a progressively higher ratio of shit being released. Perhaps it will be harder to sift through it all to get to the quality. Perhaps it will lower the benchmark for the quality bands feel they need to release, perhaps this is why there are as many shit releases as there are. In the end however, there are still going to be good releases, and through word of mouth or the power of downloading I don't think they will pass us by.
How does one possibly keep up with 3000+ plus releases?
Why would you want to? Does one have to have heard every release in a year? I guess if you get some sort of power trip out of having heard more bands than the next bloke then you've got quite the challenge ahead of you. Personally, so long as I get to hear a few good release a year I'm happy. The more the merrier, and I'm sure some people have been dissappointed with the amount of quality releases coming out, but really that's a quality issue, not a quantity issue. It's not about keeping up, it's about the quality of what you do hear.
How can we expect magazines/other news sources to?
Obviously M-A is coping okay, assuming that they have covered the majority of new releases themselves.
Who decides which bands are relevant?
The relevance of bands is determined all the time on these forums. Someone brings up a band, some bitch about it, others wank all over it, in the end we all make up our own minds.
I listen to a band, I take into account what others are saying, and I make a subjective assessment from there.
When does the number flatten out?
I'm assuming you're talking about the trend for increasing numbers of releases. My prediction is that as record sales decline as a result of mass downloading and the cost of producing a record far outweights the profits the number of releases a year will flatten out. This will result in shedding of a lot of the mass shit. Of course the generic popular shit will remain, but that's always been there to an extent.
No, I'm done.