[robbyking]

>> It's hard to say if this is a bad thing, though. [...] The saturation of poor-quality music seems to be having a negative effect on music quality overall.

Personally, I think it's fantastic. While mainstream pop has become overwhelmingly homogeneous over the last decade, underground and alternative hip hop have arguably become the two most innovative genres of music of the last 40 years.

That said, it works both ways, and as you pointed out the static to noise ratio is still pretty bad. I think the biggest issue is still the fact that the loudest voices get the most attention, and those voices still belong to the big three record labels.