We've noticed before the rapid collapse of tips for good music here - the Your Views forum gets far more visits and posts than this Tipsheet one does these days.
The Velvet Rope board has shrunk in the USA and the Record of the Day board has folded - leaving only the regular E-Mails precising the music related news in the other publications for lazy executives too bored to read them for themselves (I always distrusted that idea as the best information comes from pieces that don't obviously focus on music - if a reader doesn't care enough to peruse everything, they don't really love music - just the idea of appearing to do so - a very common epidemic in our industry now full of fake poseurs).

I watched this Tipsheet board slow down over the years - defenders of enthusiasm point to the rise of Twitter and Facebook (bollocks - none of them rave about good music either).

It's sad but true that people care less about music these days (Alex and I were discussing this over a meal recently).

I think it's because the specialisation of tastes has taken over - which makes it harder for genuine mass appeal hits to get attention. Funnily enough, only the Gotye track, which I can't understand, seems to be a recent genuine crossover hit.

So a forum that talks about the different beats or bass lines on a hip hop track might get some comments but anything with general appeal is too deep for the superficial 140 character generation.

Repercussions? Well, it reflects the superficiality of humanity. Quick solutions, simple explanations, caricatures and headline slogans are all we care about. No time or inclination for depth.

And the inevitable conclusion?

The destruction of the species, I'm afraid.

We've lost that loving feeling indeed.

I would be fairer to say it's just the board that has stopped since our server crash. We are having a new site built and may well bring a new board back.
You'll be delighted to know we'll be ten in November, and feedback to featured tracks has never been stronger and subscriber numbers continue to rise.

Onwards and upwards...

Places where people discuss things naturally changes all the time, the same as crowds would change coffee shops or pubs to frequent, so I dont think really that this is a music thing, its more like a "choice of venue" situation, and wherever a discussion starts , it will tend to stay there-and yes there are good raves about music on Twitter and on Facebook, but they have to be seeked out, started or ultimately judged as to whether its actually that good or not or just a street team hype going on-which does, the same as it did/does on the music message boards.

As for the quality in general of music changing the amount of people talking about it, well, I see that there is a trend at the moment causing this, and I think that its a case of too much of average and below quality coming out into the mainstream.It was hard enough wading through cassette tapes through the door, now the damn things are released-all power to this-but they still sound the same as they would have done!

I live in hope- it will all change again, once the world remembers that its the musician that makes the music and not the computer after all.(or perhaps somebody should tell the computer....)

Yes - the reason I started the Tip Sheet in the 90s was because of the demise of Radio One and the lack of a proper filter service.

Times change. Very quickly I discovered, sadly, that whilst people tend to enter the industry because of love of music, that emotion is swiftly superseded by love of partner, offspring, comforts, holidays and other luxuries.

We kept enthusiasm up for several years but other events took over and the Tip Sheet lost impetus.

Like the old model, the new way of filtering talent died away.

I've tried to construct a new model for breaking music (see how Alex Day does in the chart of April 7th). I'll soon start trying to construct a new filter for enthusiasm.