Interesting. But it's circular reasoning isn't it? "there were less people, so less innovation. Then there were more people, so more innovation. But now there's

Interesting. But it's circular reasoning isn't it? "there were less people, so less innovation. Then there were more people, so more innovation. But now there's more people, but less innovation, so it must be a dark age" doesn't really work as a self-evident statement. You could make an argument that innovation follows the money. The innovation boom of the late 20th century correlates with the music industry profit boom of the same priod. Now there's less money being made, there's less innovation. Also, you could probably chart the risk-taking of the music industry. They started off not knowing what the hell anyone wanted, so produced weird shit. Then they got hit by waves of disruption. Then they got a grip on it all and stopped taking risks. Which is where we are: stuff that sounds different doesn't get published. Except, of course, that we have people self-publishing now. There probably is completely freaky weird awesome shit being made, but we don't hear it because discovery is hard in such a huge sea of music. Interesting stuff.