Some have suggested that 2012 is the year that pop music has become more successful than rock music. On the face of it, there's a lot of evidence to support this.

However, this has got me thinking - on the basis of my own music purchases during 2012 and the past few years in particular, I've been buying a lot of music which has taken me into new territories. After discovering Norman Records a couple of years back, I've since been buying a lot of post-classical (Nils Frahm, Max Richter, Clem Leek, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Olafur Arnalds), drone (Simon Scott, Sonmi 451, Wil Bolton, Fabio Orsi), electronica/shoegaze (Ulrich Schnauss, Belong) along with also discovering many bands such as Epic45, The Domino State, Exit Calm and July Skies.

Coincidentally, I've been falling out with many major label releases (I don't like Dry The River's or Lana Del Rey's albums, Florence's second album sounds far too polished, Kasabian's 'Velociraptor' is frankly not very good and Arctic Monkeys have definitely gone off the boil).

I figure that I've hit a bit of a brick wall and either (a) the music scene is not very healthy in 2012, or (b) I'm not looking in the right places.

What do you think??