[tonecluster]

About discovery:

These days, the barrier to entry for discovery is lower than it's ever been. If you get your music on all of the various internet music services and some of the internet-radio programming, you are much more heavily distributed worldwide than any garage-band in the 70s or 80s could ever have been at the time.

The 'bar for discovery' has two parts: The bar for potential discovery is now very, very low. But for actual discovery it is high because the "signal-to-noise" ratio is very low: by that I mean there is so much crap (noise) to wade through before you find a great band (signal) that the work of curating has shifted from the radio stations and record labels to the consumer. The nice thing is that you can find excellent music the major labels will simply ignore. The not so nice thing: it requires work on your part to seek out and engage with the curators of content.

This is why finding the internet radio programs that feature the genre you enjoy, and following the music-programmers who curate with taste that you share, is vital to a good discovery experience.