Tokage

There's also a weird resurgence of fans that think downloading is morally objectionable and as such only like the 10 or so bands that got any sort of Western circulation, never diving any deeper than that.

I was under the impression this was just laziness / whiteknighting, but it could very well be there just aren't many resources for them to do so anymore. 12 years ago there TONS of blogs dedicated to sharing music for vkei and it was ofter regarded as "one of the easiest kinds of music to find" by people who didn't have the money to buy everything from iTunes. Now, it seems to be the opposite post direct download crack downs, although more groups are starting to embrace digital distribution.

I wonder how much losing lastfm played into this as well. There's next to no emphasis on trying out random small bands to appear worldly or because saw you someone else listening to it and liked their picture. It's just not cool anymore, I guess?

That's why I tend to upload random stuff I get from rarezcrates or stumble upon in my hard drive. No one asked, but more often than not it's just not online anymore since all of those upload blogs just reposted the same links rather than upping it themselves. 

I've been under the impression that this whole new-gen laziness to explore beyond like the two or three bands people decide to hyper-fixate on + the whiteknighting thing might stem from the fact that a lot of the newer fans just have no idea of how easy things used to be back during The Golden Days(tm)  and thus don't really know what they're missing out on either.

I think that losing out on something like last.fm may have played a part in the loss of the whole 'i just decided to try out this random band bc their bassist's dressed like an egg' thing for sure, though i feel like it's also kind of becoming a streaming generation thing in general to simply not bother digging deeper beyond whatever the Spotify/Youtube algorithm feeds you, isn't it? I guess RYM kind of allows for the whole 'peeping what your friends are listening to' experience as well but I feel like it's somehow still not quite the same

I personally believe it would already help out a lot if some new batch of dedicated 'curators' would spring up again. People who are deeply into particular niches of the scene w/ the knowledge, access to interesting stuff and  willingness to share for preservation's sake.. A lot of the titans from back in the day seem to have kinda 'retired' and i'm pretty sure that's had an impact as well 

Another insightful day at MH! Keep it, guys! Love reading'ya!