Reading through this thread has been fun.
I think most of us simply miss "the glory days". I could turn on the radio and hear trance. I could go to a record store and buy trance. The community due to the likes of trance.nu, tranceaddict and the fact that it was in vogue was massive.
But the internet meant that record labels could release music, and the bar for entry was set so low (no overheads to press to vinyl/CD, no A&R, no distribution fees) that labels could afford to take a punt on shite music, in the hope that if you fling enough shit at the wall some of it will stick.
It's that simple.
So browsing a record store pondering how on earth I'm going to cull the 20 incredible records I've picked down to an affordable amount became a thing of the past, and I found myself trawling through page, after page, after page of shit on beatport - made worse by the fact that labels suddenly started classifying big room/EDM shit as progressive house, ruining the genre that the likes of sasha/kleinenberg/cattaneo/warren/etc had worked so hard to forge.
I guess I'm just old and, perhaps bitter... But I think that's the wrong word. I still listen to all of the old stuff, and the English language sadly doesn't have a word for how it makes me feel. But the Portuguese language does.
"Saudade"
"Saudade is an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone. It is often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the recipient of longing ever again."
Anyway, I'm still kicking about listening to music I love from artists I'm discovering all the time on soundcloud - the talent is out there, and it's real, and we need to champion it.
Cheers,
Macker