To play the devil's advocate a bit, while I do agree with most of what you've said in this thread, I take issue with this recurring theme of a band's "quality" ultimately prevailing and elevating them into inevitable success. The notion that if a band is "good enough" they will rise to the top simply ignores too many factors at play: genre, marketability, accessibility/mainstream appeal, etc...the list goes on.
Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree are massive outliers in that they toe the line between being obscure and somewhat accessible, and even they aren't exactly rolling in the dough. I'm sure both you and I like plenty of bands that make brilliant music in our opinions, but that we both know will never garner a fraction of the recognition we think they deserve.
My point is that a band's commercial success has much more to do with wide, broad-spectrum appeal than it does with making what you or I consider "quality music".
-J
I agree that it's not inevitable... but on a theoretically even playing field, where all bands got equal publicity, that would be the only reason. It's in effect to an extent now - much as I like the band (and I really do!), I'm not going to buy Threshold tickets when I can buy Dream Theater ones.
Aside from quality, lack of publicity is the only thing a band really has to hide behind. They're the two factors: how many people know about the music, and how many people like it? You can look at them as two totally separate processes - views and investments.
First step is getting people through the door and looking at your work, second step is to get them to invest in it. If people like something enough, they
do invest in it. Whether it be a t-shirt or a poster or a gig or, yes, an album, they will invest in it. If you've not got people viewing it, that'll lower your investments. The internet, however, allows
everyone to view it, maximising in turn the possible investments.
Either nobody's looking at it, or nobody's investing. Which means you either need...
a. more people to look at it, which is where those people who didn't pay for the song nonetheless come in
massively useful, because some simply won't pay for anything, regardless of how much they like it. Nonetheless, they'll spread the word, and they'll tell people who
will be investors. And there are certainly enough investors to keep a rich music scene turning, with more born every day.
OR
b. better music. Which will lead to a.
The amount of help you get with "a" used to be more determined by the kind of marketing you get, but now it's a more even split, putting more emphasis on "b." Now bands can survive and reach a magnificent audience simply by virtue of producing brilliant music (see also, Porcupine Tree), rather than needing a shove from the record label to facilitate "a." So nowadays, it's more likely that the more obscure bands aren't going to stay obscure for long, 'cause it's available for free. Word of mouth's a lot more important... so if a band isn't getting the same word of mouth exposure as another,
why isn't it? Given that there are way fewer obstacles nowadays. Each publicity burst needs ignition, but just food for thought.
I've kind of got out of the "groove" now so I've got a feeling this might be messier than my previous posts on the subjects - sorry about that. Probably riddled with holes, but I hope some of it made a trickle of sense.