'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

A Pandora station based on other bands I like seems to work reasonably well for finding new music. Most are still terrible but it finds a good one often enough.

> I don't have time to listen to all the great music in the world.

The problem is that the filters you describe are so narrow that certain genres of music don't get adequately explored, and some genres don't exist at all. In broad terms that's bound to happen, but the missing and under-served genres are so obvious that the filters are clearly limiting the maximum amount of musical enjoyment and meaning that's available to the average listener.

For a dead simple example-- Bach and Beethoven were known as the greatest improvisers in their eras. So where is the Grammy winning album of someone improvising a set of their own variations in the style of Beethoven? Who is the Michael Jordan of improvising a set of 30 new variations atop the bassline of the Goldberg variations?

Don't get me wrong-- there are people who can improvise perfectly well in those styles. But there's no industrial incentive to push those artists to release something truly transcendent-- e.g., something that reveals for a general audience something new about music in the time of Bach's, who makes it fresh, and who redefines what improvisation can be. There's no period improviser so single-minded and driven that an audience of tens of millions would spend lock-down watching a 10-part miniseries on the making of such an album.

Another one, off the top of my head-- what's the version of math rock where there's no common subdivision shared by each line? Computers make this effortless to write, but AFAICT that genre doesn't exist. For just a simple example, Steve Reich's Phasing exists as a prototype-- it shows that there's a compelling perceptual basis for presenting the same melody at tempos that are very close to one another.

There are many other examples, and the filter you refer to means you've never, ever heard them.

So growing old and getting set in a desire for nostalgic music isn't so much a natural law of musical desires as it is the result of creating "The Matrix" for music in the age of the internet by locking your ears into the same old payola scheme from the before times. (I guess the "heat" captured from your attention is to fuel the machine world of the filters... :)

Go on... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

> society has an interest in seeing him punished, if for no other reason than as actual prevention [it would be quite hard for him to molest more girls while incarcerated].

If Polanski hadn't fled, how much time would he have actually spent in prison? He had a plea bargain for time served (he'd already spent a bit over 40 days in prison) and probation. That plea bargain was approved by the victim and her parents. The judge started (rather unprofessionally) bragging to people he was going to cancel the plea bargain and send Polanski to prison for 50 years. Polanski heard about it, panicked, and fled. But, realistically, the judge was unlikely to give him anywhere near 50 years. He probably wasn't even going to get 50 months – possibly, the unprofessional bragging might have been all for nothing and the judge might have stuck to the plea bargain. Even if the judge decided to overrule it, given sentencing practices at the time, the sentence probably wouldn't have been for very long (more likely months than years), and a heavy sentence would have had high odds of being overturned on appeal. Indeed, lawyers who have looked at the case say that, were Polanski to voluntarily return to the US (or somehow be captured by US authorities), he is unlikely to serve much time at all for his original crime of abusing Geimer – if he is facing serious time for anything, it is going to be for fleeing from prosecution rather than the underlying offence.

If Polanski had got time served (original plea bargain), or a few months in prison (likely outcome if it the judge overruled it), how much protection of children from harm would have society actually received? If Polanski spends 6 months in prison, that's a mere 6 months in which he can't abuse anyone. He might not have abused anyone in those 6 months even if he were free. It is hard to take the preventive justification for sentencing seriously in the context of the magnitude of the sentence Polanski was likely facing.

> I don't think this is solely, and maybe not even primarily about the state seeking power, but rather properly exercising power granted it by the people.

Geimer feels abused by the system, and I think her feelings are entirely legitimate. The prosecution and judges should take some responsibility for what they've done to her (a real flesh and blood person with real thoughts and feelings) rather than hiding behind this inchoate abstraction of "the people".