I get the point. As a practicing musician, I quite disagree. These folks aren't terrible, but they aren't, like Queen or Michael Jackson. There are a couple

I get the point. As a practicing musician, I quite disagree. These folks aren't terrible, but they aren't, like Queen or Michael Jackson. There are a couple of directions that my disagreements run, but of them would be something like this: there's no middle ground where people can make a modest living playing music anymore. There were several ways to do that, prior to the mid 90s. That was good for the industry in that instead of only allowing amatures or world-class acts to be performing, you had a ton of folks kind of not being great. But the only way you get to be really, really good at this is by doing it all the time. So now, instead of having a bunch of folks who were kind of making it, you mostly have either destitute folks or hobbyists. So I don't agree that having a bunch of middling musicians didn't produce good music: where do we think all those really talented, experienced folks come from? People aren't born knowing how to arrange a tune or work an audience.