Originally Posted by Rainard Jalen

Do you hear anybody now talking about the greatness of some album that came out in 2001 that very few people recognized at the time? Do you see any such albums in the end of decade best of 2000s lists? Fact is that it doesn't really happen. The music press is too big in the modern era.

There were times in the past, say the late 60s to at the most the mid-90s where wonderful releases were really confined to very small circles of the music-listening community and never got recognition at the time, only to be looked back on in awe by much larger crowds many years on. The reason for this was the lack of the world wide web and its webzines, discussion boards and whatnot. These days, on the other hand, anything that has any particular merit to it gets attention fairly quickly an the word spreads like wildfire.