As a relatively new collector of VGM, I find myself surprised by the low traffic on VGM forums internet-wide.

For example, StC seems to get maybe one new thread per day, which seems actually much more active than other sites (vgmdb for example).  This is contrast to other communities I'm familiar with (coin collecting, audio equipment, video game speedrunning), which seem much more active by comparison.

Any thoughts on why this is the case?  Is it just related to the size of the VGM community, which is smaller than the other communities I've mentioned?  Or are there other reasons, e.g. "there is more discussion on Japanese language sites", "most things worth discussing have already been discussed," ...) ?

Stateside it is primarily a very expensive hobby (though cheaper than when most of us here started) and the audience tends to be younger people (i.e., the core market for video gamers and anime enthusiasts).  Those two don't mix very well.  It is also a very small, very niche community, especially these days in the day of digital where people don't really care about discussing things as much as they care about downloading an album and that's about it.  There also really isn't that much to discuss about it unless you have some sort of music background and can discuss in depth the compositional and arrangement side of things or you're just generically reviewing new albums or interviewing composers.

I have perceived a diminution of VGM discussion over the last few years and offer the following possible reasons:

(1) Much English-language VGM discussion pertained to procurement, which is easier now than in the late 90s, early 00s.  Back in the day, buying VGM online outside of Japan meant patronizing short-lived online storefronts with paltry inventories.  That's no longer the case, so there's not much to discuss in terms of procurement.

(2) Much VGM discussion pertained to track/album/composer details.  There were always sites with tracklists and such, but fine details were shared in a sort of "oral history" way in VGM forums.  Nowadays VGMdb provides a centralized database for this information.

(3) Fanbase attrition: I think it's safe to say that a majority of VGM enthusiasts became fans back when hardware limitations gave VGM a unique sound or in the few years afterwards when the legacy of that sound remained.  Let's face it: We're old now, and many of us have retired from fandom.  I consider myself to be retired from VGM collecting, and I no longer play video games, so I'm not being exposed to new VGM.

These days most video game soundtracks can't be distinguished stylistically from other kinds of soundtracks/music.  So although gamers may enjoy the music that they hear in games, they're not as likely to perceive that music as belonging to a discrete category of music for games or identify themselves as being VGM fans.  Thus there aren't enough new hobbyists to replace those who have left the hobby.

I agree with pretty much everything rein said.

I started coming to this site in 1998, I think. At that point, there was a lot of discussion, and as rein alluded to, most of it revolved around what was out there and how to get it. The idea of there being an album like Dracula New Classic arose a lot of interest, and almost no one had heard it. When a copy did go for sale, there was a bidding frenzy. The few who had connections in Japan were able to get albums the rest of us could only dream about. As a longtime Falcom fan, pretty much everything I was interested in was out of print when I started looking. Over 17 years, I was able to get pretty much everything I have wanted, and I'm not really looking for too much more.

These days, the only new releases I even look at are from Falcom or Konami (I used to keep up with Cave releases as well, but it seems that they have stopped releasing albums and/or games). There are a few exceptions (I thank the people who were so complimentary of Bravely Default), but not many. I haven't looked for VGM on eBay in years, and I look on YJA maybe once a week.

I also have a lot more responsibilities today than I did when I started collecting. I have two young children and a job that involves a lot of travel and long hours. I barely have time to listen to music these days.

With many collectors having pared down their collections considerably or sold off everything entirely, I am curious how many of us still have large collections (300+).  Because I'm more selective now than back in the day, I feel I am missing unsung Japanese releases, but I am getting pricey rare albums I'd always wanted so the tradeoff is there.

This was never the largest community to begin with, so I don't think it's very representative, but I don think pretty much everything stated above is true for a lot of people.

For me, VGM is still the only thing I listen to, but I pretty much never buy CDs anymore (don't even have a dedicated CD player) but I also rarely hear anything I feel I really need to own nowadays.

That and, like many others, I just don't spend a lot of time listening to music in the first place. I'm more into podcasts these days.

I still have all mine.  I just can't justify selling them since I'd be lucky to even get original cost for them.  The only items I've sold in the last 5 years have been previous releases that get replaced by a box set version or things I've accidentally bought more than one of (has happened a few times -_-).  Unless I go through some sort of dire financial straits in the near future I don't see myself parting with anything in my collection.

I still buy albums regularly, but I limit my purchases to things I know I'll like and every once and a while I'll throw something in on a whim.

I mostly attribute it to the dynamic of the rise of downloading (vs collecting) and the general collapse of the Japanese game industry. That puts an axe on the neck of two of the richest veins of VGM discussion these and other forums experienced since the rise of the internet.

I have mixed feelings about the downloading thing and even the Youtube sampling. There is that increased exposure to obscenely rare and out of print albums that are often coveted, as well as ones you're not likely to buy without first hearing the music in some way, but it removes the sacrifice one must make to obtain them. Which means there is going to naturally be less discussion and less trading of those albums. A long time ago, I used to regularly write reviews for VGM albums and my mindset was always, "Is this album worth spending money on?" When the downloading thing really started taking off, I realized I was wasting my time because now everyone has the same chance to listen to the album and judge for themselves without giving up anything. Again, not a bad thing (especially for people that want to bypass the whole collecting thing altogether and for those of us that would prefer to spend money on the good stuff, as opposed to the effort of pawning off the bad stuff), just radically different. Me personally, I'm less likely to have strong viewpoints on an album I download and dislike, compared to one I paid good money for and get burned on. I assume most people feel similar.

I don't think I need to elaborate on the death of the Japanese game industry thing, but 15 years ago there was a LOT more VGM worth talking about. Both in terms of new releases and the large amount of albums that went out of print in the previous decade and were highly sought after. It felt like every few months, I was stumbling on some cool new franchise or discovery or there was some new killer RPG coming out that I hoped sounded as good as it looked (I remember going and renting Legend of Mana so I could sample the music). It was like the perfect equilibrium. Nowadays, it feels like much of the talk is on western releases, various concerts/tributes to "classic" VGM and of course "hey guys, I made some VGM! plz listen". There's rarely anything coming out I get excited about as a result. Frankly, I can't think of many reasons for people to be enthusiastic nowadays, unless it's solely to visit the past. There are a few lone bright spots (Nintendo has had a decent run of recent soundtracks, Sonic albums have been largely excellent, stuff like Shovel Knight is a nice a throwback) but they feel too much like exceptions vs the rule now. Also, there aren't pillars of constant discussion like Uematsu or Mitsuda being incredibly active. A few years ago, Square disbanded their sound team and the general response* was "who cares?". If that happened in 2000, people would be jumping out windows.

Edit*: This thread: http://soundtrackcentral.com/square-eni … eam/tp5478

I still collect, but mostly I'm filling holes I've long had in my collection and mostly from classic Capcom/Konami/Sega/Namco/Square/Falcom/Taito albums from the 90's and early 2000's. Everything from the artwork to the music I find agreeable from this era, so it's stuff I have no problem shelling out for. I feel really fortunate to have gotten into the hobby right in the midst of all that goodness.

Also, in all fairness to the OP, I'm familiar with both speedrunning and Head-fi. Unless there's a forum other than speeddemosarchive that I'm not familiar with, I would say most of the activity for speedrunning takes place in streams and chats. Even the SDA forums aren't exactly brustling with activity. There's a lot of threads there that tend to die after 1 or 2 responses (or it's one person talking to themself), unless it's a particularly hot game or an uncoming event.

With audio equipment, there are a LOT of fluff posts. Try bringing up the effect of power cables or interconnects on a sound rig to see what I mean. And if you DARE to criticize a piece of equipment for sounding bad, be prepared to be jumped on by people who own and love that same piece (or shills for that equipment). I've had my ups and downs with the headphone community and I navigate with a lot of caution.

I consider a CD album of a game soundtrack a work of Art that I can hold in my hands. It's also a lossless presentation of the music in the game and if I need to I can always rip it for mp3s.

There was an excellent article in Wired in 2009 called The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine
http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscel … ntPage=all

I highly recommend reading it - as it talks a lot about how things are today including YouTube - the quality of video and audio is not the best - but for most people its good enough. There's also an example of a professor who plays a CD version of a track, and an MP3 version and the students actually prefer the sound of the MP3 file, although it is compressed. We are becoming used to a "good enough" sound.

Also, I think the comments rein made about attempting to acquire music years ago are valid. Nowadays people don't need to spend time discussing music, they just have to google the music they're looking for and listen to it on Youtube of find the link to purchase or download it.

Like The_Paladin said though, there's a payoff for some of us old folks is that we can finally get our hands on some rare gems from those purging their collections. I will happily oblige them.

I'd be interested to hear Adam's thoughts on this topic.  I appreciate his efforts in keeping the site looking good and running smoothly, but I also wonder why he goes to the trouble at this point.

Incidently I'd hardly say that SDA doesn't get much traffic....it's just mostly tied to individual games. And VGMDB gets more posts than here, though again they are usually on individual albums (and most of the time related to translation or "who wrote/arranged/performed" what.

There isn't a huge VGM scene as there are many ways to go about it (by composers, companies, systems, formats as OSTs are not the only way etc. pp.) and it's ultimately a matter of taste on what one focuses. Considering any one of these is very niche outside of few blockbuster releases that enjoy popularity outside the VGM circles (DQ, FF and Shoji Meguro it seems), this naturally fragments the audience.

I still collect game CDs, I've cut back. I once tried to get every single Final Fantasy release, no matter how rare or exclusive. Now, I only buy the major ones and don't even bother trying to track down the LEs, promo dics, or retailer exclusives. Similarly, I used to collect all the Tales OSTs, but I stopped doing that a few years ago when the yen got strong. They weren't bringing me any joy and I was only buying them because I bought the other ones, so I dropped that series entirely. Now that the yen is weak again, I've been splurging a little more than I should, but I'll pull back when the yen strengthens again.

I totally respect those who have moved to buying game music digitally (or simply streaming it), but I like the fun of collecting and having something to hold and put on my shelf. Having a bunch of sound files on a hard drive doesn't do anything for me, even if the music is just as good. I suppose I will stop buying new game music once the CD format is retired or I can no longer by optical disc drives for future PCs, but for now I'm still keeping up with major releases.

As to why discussion has trailed off so much, I think the rest of you have hit on all of the major reasons. In particular, I think the ease of sampling has really taken its toll. Back in the late 90s, it was always exciting to read impressions by forum members who got the latest albums. You got to know who had similar tastes to you, and when they recommended something, you really looked forward to getting the CD in the mail and hearing it for yourself. Back then, Square's upcoming PSX games were the stuff of legends, and listening to the music months before the game came to the U.S. was thrilling.

As someone else pointed out, the decline of the Japanese game industry has had a knock on effect on this hobby. Most major game CD releases these days are just arrange albums of stuff that was popular 10 or 20 years ago (I'm listening to Bra Bra Final Fantasy as I write this). They're still good arrangements, but the newness is notably absent. I think Bravely Default was a rare gem that came out of nowhere a couple years ago, but albums like that are the exception these days.

There is a lot of great game music coming out of Western indie teams, but so little of it makes it to CD that it's not really for collecting, and nobody talks about it because you can just go to bandcamp and download it whenever you want. There's no more thrill of the chase, no more nerd pride in having something special. The democratization of game music is good for music fans, but it's taken it's toll on communities built around niche collecting.

To contrast, notice how hot amiibo collecting has become. A year ago, amiibo were just weird curiosities Nintendo was talking about, but today there's TONS of internet discussion around them. Communities naturally form around shared interests of scare objects of desire. If Nintendo ever catches up with demand or (more likely) when the fad blows over, those communities will disband as quickly as they formed.

I largely agree with your post, but not really this paragraph. I think the music I've heard from this population falls in line with my regular impression of the indie game scene. That is, you wade through tons and tons of crap in hopes of finding gems. The last two humble game music bundles were pretty disappointing to me overall and I ended up scrapping both of them in the end because I just stopped caring. I think we tried to start a discussion thread about one and it fell pretty flat.

Again, I can't think of too much that would get me legitimately excited like I was for classic Japanese VGM. Not even close. At most, it would be stuff like virt or Souleye that directly channel classic 8 or 16 bit VGM and I can see people not weened on that stuff wondering what the big deal is. For me personally, the key is do they offer the soundtrack in a lossless format and most of them do. That way, if that rare gem does come along, it's in the highest quality format possible.

That is what I don't really get about VGMdb. I respect the hard work that goes into translations and uncovering who did what, but it feels like the enthusiasm towards enjoying VGM is not really there. At least not in the forum posts. Highly informative, yet sterile and lifeless at the same time.

Also not really thrilled the main discussion forum there has devolved into a large group of random artists trying to post their latest original VGM or covers.

Personally, I'm in something of a time warp and still daydream about Xenogears, Chrono Chross etc (the games and the soundtracks) like it's 1999, so I do find it bittersweet that the community is on the wane. Perhaps it's simply that I haven't moved on to those two common steps on the escalator of life - starting a family and/or serious career - but some of my gaming experiences have never lost their power. I still collect CDs because as well as the music I'm interested in preserving the actual packaging design, printing, pressing etc... sort of an archivist streak. I also find that I listen more closely to music as part of a ritual - selecting an album, removing the disc, looking at the art - rather than just picking tracks out of one vast, indifferent playlist.

Being primarily a fan of Japanese exports, I must admit there are now fewer and fewer releases of interest. This brought me close to ending the hobby a few years ago, but then I played El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron and its soundtrack took my breath away - something about that resonated strongly with my memories of the greats of old. Between that and Xenoblade my hope was renewed. There's no doubt things have changed a lot, though, and many of us will have resigned ourselves to the fact that we were part of a particular niche, with a particular interest, that has had its day and probably can't happen again. At least not until the next iteration of this universe.

VGM is flourishing in concerts, remixes and podcasts. I don't think VGM fandom has decreased, just the traditional discussion on web forums. Like others have said, there's no need to read reviews, since downloading is so easy. I think STC and VGMdb are so geared towards the physical soundtrack perspective of VGM, that non-collecting new people might not join the discussion. For example, I don't lately listen to VGM one soundtrack at a time. I listen to just one composer at a time, jumping from game to game. I love some of Mitsuda's tracks from Deep Labyrinth, but it doesn't have a full soundtrack release and I don't think anyone would care too much if I started a thread about its music.

I think the VGM discussion scene should evolve with the flow. Look at things like the Obscure Video Game Music  FB group, it has over 1,000 members. People love to share their VGM discoveries by posting a YouTube link and saying why they love it.

That enthusiasm could be channeled into discussion quite smartly. In Finland we have this game called "levyraati" where a group of friends each pick a song, listen to to them together and rate them. It started as a TV show, which was based of "Juke Box Jury". You could do this online to create VGM discussion. A person picks 3-5 tracks, posts YouTube links to them and everyone has one week to comment & rate the tracks. The following week the next person in queue picks his 3-5 tracks. Again everyone has one week's time and if you don't comment & rate, you fall back one step in the queue. That's the carrot. Then finally it's your time to share your favorite VGM. If you would just have 50 people comment every week on 3 tracks, it would result in 7,800 comments in a year (spread over 156 tracks). This system would generate so much discussion. If more people join, you could have different categories, like "SNES music", "Western VGM", "90s VGM", "Everything goes", etc.

We did this in our tiny Finnish VGM forum, but it would work better on a dedicated site that automates the queues and time limits. And has a database that stores track ratings/comments and links tracks to composers and games, for easy navigation. If I'd have the money, I would a hire a programmer to create this site. If you're a programmer with extra time, please steal this idea or let me help you create it

I always felt this is an issue with the forum format they use, not having two distinct threads for each album, one for work on perfecting the documentation and one for simple talk about the actual music. So the former nearly always tend to drown out the latter which discourages more posts of the latter kind.

No one really goes to a database site to discuss how they feel about music, it's just completely contrary to the entire theme of the site.  The same as it would be strange for someone to post here and ask for a translation, or a list of everything by an artist/company/series.

Actually I have posted here about assistance with translation before.  I should probably restart that, but I've been slacking off lately. =P

I kind of see it as part-database, part-enthusiast site and part-marketplace. I guess I see it as more than just a database. The boards are there, the information is there, what's to stop people from talking about the music? Similar to Anime News Network, which does a little bit of everything for the anime fandom (including a pretty robust encyclopedia) and has a lively forum. Or Encyclopedia Metallum for heavy metal, which does double duty as a reference and an enthusiast site as well. To me, it just seems like a giant disconnect there.

I sometimes wonder if the way VGMDB turns people off to it -- that is to say, whenever you visit the website it marks you as having 'visited' no matter if you do into the actual forum or not. So if you want to keep up with posts you have to visit the forum any time you go to the site for any reason.I actually visit the site as a whole less because of it.

Yeah about this... I can't help but see this as a bunch of pole licking. Sorry, that's how I feel. And yes, I have gone to a live show... but this is from someone who really doesn't "get" why orchestrating something supposedly makes it attractive or more attractive than it was in the original game-midi.

Pretty much this. So many iconic franchises are either dead or circling the drain at the moment. Not saying you (or I) should stick to the mainstays but even the mainstays that are still around have changed quite a bit.

I disagree, the site could easily be made more accommodating for discussions about music. And the fact it's database driven would allow for more focused discussions about specific niche music for which potential participants can't be found as easily elsewhere.

A lot of the forum activity of the past was motivated by acquisition. We used to trade and sell CD-R copies here all the time. The selling and trading of CD-R copies was motivated by poor internet bandwidth. If internet access speeds had started out at cable data rates, rather than phone line rates, then perhaps the whole era of CD-R selling and trading could've been skipped. In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was very frustrating to download just one mp3 file and you didn't even dream of downloading a whole album, hence the CD-R era.

The CD-R era forced people to talk to one another, which is very much unlike listening to albums on youtube or waiting for a generous FFShriner to upload an entire album and ask for nothing in return. Today, you can get music from someone without communication - all you have to do is wait and click. This easy access is what makes reviews have less value, as others have pointed out.

I agree that pretty much all official releases are easy to preview before buying these days - and there is little to discuss for these.

Doujin releases seem much more hit-and-miss.  Here, much of the older stuff isn't on the internet - and without anywhere to preview or discuss the music, usually I just buy and cross my fingers.  Though even if there was a central discussion hub, it's probably a pipe dream to think I'd find someone to discuss a niche album like this:

http://vgmdb.net/album/44041

which only one person on vgmdb (me) has in their collection.

This seems to come up every so often, but never in the reverse. What would it take to get you excited in the VGM community again?

I would say a decent string of releases. I understand people can only get so excited about what has already come out, but there is little to look forward to. Again, that is tied to the current state of gaming as a whole. The Japanese companies can't focus on releasing top notch VGM when most of them are struggling to stay afloat.

Again, I bring up 1998-2000...tons of releases, tons of stuff to catch up on if you were just getting into VGM, the internet was really coming into its own, many of the "great" composers at or near their peak, etc. If you discovered VGM at the time, after growing up on a steady stream of 8 and 16 bit music, then made the transition to the 32 bit systems, you know it's a time period you can't duplicate. Kind of like people who lived through Beatlemania or Led Zeppelin in their prime.

Curious ...

1) which *one live show* did you see?
2) when you say pole licking, are you referring to the triple-dog-dare stupidity of licking a frozen pole and your tongue getting stuck? Or are you going for a sexual euphemism, a la "circle jerk"? If the latter ... whose pole is being licked?

Having seen MAAAANY live shows, that have spanned many different musical genre (classical orchestral, big band / "pops" orchestral, rock-orch hybrid, rock bands, hip hop, chiptunes/EDM DJ fun times, solo instrumentalists, small chamber arrangements) ... I think it needs to be said that NOT ALL LIVE SHOWS (and their arrangements) ARE CREATED EQUALLY.

As for why orchestrating the music might make it "better" -- when a game MIDI uses synths that are doing their damned-est to imitate a real instrument, but the tech just can't get them there, it only makes sense that the composer's original intent would have been to use that ACTUAL instrument. However, when MIDI uses wave patterns that can only be produced with electronic equipment (pure square waves, triangle waves, or something really advanced but was essentially created in electronic music experimentation, not MEANT to have an acoustic counterpart) -- then yeah, that music doesn't really make sense to "upgrade" into orchestra. Cuz it's really not an upgrade, just a transposition from one instrumental voice to another.

Thus, my frustration that FF Tactics hasn't gotten more orchestration (supported by S-E) than it deserves. Based on what I saw at VGO in 2012, however, I wonder if the answer to that question is "that music is legitimately challenging to perform." the song "Trisection" is quite the feat to pull off with a 50+ group of musicians due to its rhythmic insanity.

I tend to remain in a pretty constant state of cautious optimism. Have been that way for about a decade now.

What tends to get me most excited these days are boxed sets. I'm a nut for "complete" collections. And while many boxed sets don't get there (especially if that set is for a series that isn't quite dead yet ... and with BoF VI even that box will become incomplete), you can get a lot of great music in one set. The SaGa and Mana box sets were fantastic ... those were probably my favorite acquired items in the last decade, and I listen to the specific soundtracks within the sets pretty regularly.

I also tend to get excited by arrangements of old/obscure music. The SaGa Battle Arrange albums have consistently wow'ed me (ideally, I really just want all 12 battle themes from SaGa Frontier arranged. They're getting close!). Falcom's "Zanmai" series (essentially done by the same group of musicians as SaGa Battle) were also very good. The "SQ" series is hit-or-miss, but sometimes they pick a random track from a forgotten game and it comes out beautiful.

Projects like Hibino and AYAKI's "Game Music Lullabies" have done a good job of sticking to one very narrow genre (relaxing smooth jazz, bordering on "new age / healing"), and working it into all kinds of famous and not-as-famous VGM. DuckTales, Elder Scrolls, Secret of Mana, and others all on the same collection? That's good stuff.

I'd like to see this sort of work done for games from publishers other than S-E and Falcom, of course. Composer collections or tribute albums are always nice. So, for example, if someone collaborated a "Noriyuki Iwadare premium arrange album," where different arrangers each took one song from one game and made it their own (Lunar, Grandia, Langrisser, Radiata Stories, even the True Love Story games) ... that would be super-cool. And that formula could work for dozens of great composers. You'd just need the organization and fanbase to make it happen.

The final thing that gets me excited? When I hear something totally new from someone I know nothing about and I'm like "OH WOW THAT'S THE STUFF!" This happened to me with a lot of indie projects, esp. Tower of Heaven (flashygoodness) and Aquaria and Offspring Fling! (Alec Holowka). Lots of great music in the indie game scene lately.

I tried going all digital and it became too easy. Anyone, irrespective of income, can get almost anything digitally. Even if you have no income you can get the same content that people with vast incomes can obtain. Therefore, to make vgm "exciting", I decided in 2012/2013 to go physical and only listen to what I have obtained that way. My decision wasn't made in order to make vgm more exciting, but, ironically, happened due to the limitations of digital acquisition. There were some holes in my collection that couldn't be filled by downloading. Shin Momotaro Densetsu, Famicle Parodic 2, Chachamaru Human Omnibus and Chikudenya Toubei were the main culprits. No one had them, with the exception of SMD, which someone did have in the mp3 format. But the other 3 were not in anyone's digital or physical collection in the entire vgm scene outside of Japan. If someone did have them, then they were exceptionally taciturn. To this day, unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary, I'm the first outside of Japan to get them.

Shin Momotaro Densetsu was easy to find, but held behind a blockade of 25,000+ yen during a time when the exchange rate was not even 80 yen. I was continually destroyed on Yahoo Japan, every single time. After more than a year of defeat, one was listed with a buy it now around 15,000 yen. Up until that time, I never once saw a buy it now for that album. I had the mp3 files, so I knew it was worth acquiring. Downloading mp3 or flac files is no longer something I consider "acquiring". It must be the actual physical album for it to count.

Chikudenya Toubei was the first of the four that I obtained and I wasn't even looking for it. I had no samples beforehand. Once I got Chikudenya Toubei, I listed it for sale at vgmdb, due to habit. I always used to sell an album after acquiring it. But I thought about it and realized I was very lucky. This is not something anyone can pick up easily and I felt the original meant something, meant more than files on a computer. So I removed it from my sale list.

Famicle Parodic 2 took me 13 years to find. I had no samples. I detested this CD at first, but now I like it. The original medley tracks have some music from Chikudenya Toubei (which I didn't notice initially) and I suppose, other BIT² games. I have not once considered the possibility of selling this, since I invested so much time and energy trying to find it. If I were to sell it, I would expect back pay for those 13 years.

Chachamaru Human Omnibus took slightly more than a decade to find. No samples, again. I've played one of the games represented on this CD - Egypt, which is an odd Famicom puzzle game.

To summarize, what gets me excited is physical acquisition of old albums. I feel marginal excitement when new albums are announced and also when I acquire them, since there is no challenge.

This is the reason I would encourage people to be be more vocal about what they like. The Indie scene is its own worst enemy because ANYONE can put anything out and getting to what's "good" is a task in and of itself, especially if someone is not an Indie enthusiast (i.e., me).

Back in the day, we had the issue of not having enough music. Nowadays, we have the issue of having too much.

One also needs to be careful about being honest with these releases. I think too often people are afraid of offending their friends, in critiquing the music (or game) and sometimes it shows in how they write about it. Reading reviews of audio equipment has made me ultra-sensitive to that style of shilling. I thought Adam's review of that OCR Sonic album on here struck a pretty good balance, offhand.