Well seems like you touched a nerve in some folks ! For my own personal opinion . I feel that mainstream music does have some good things happening but I have to agree that marketing is more important than the actual music these days . Mtv has aided that trend , look back to bands like duran duran... fashion and haircuts then music . One of our fello goners stated something about ignorance for the last 25 years of music . Well an awful lot of good music is out there but its harder to find mainstream because of marketing did not think it would sell or you would not buy it and more importantly they would not make the coin themselves . Some of the more influentional music from the late 80's and 90,s came from the underground and now influence more bands to play "their" music without marketing being the main rule . Only problem is finding it in a sea of american idolism garbage .