My brother and I were discussing this on the weekend. I somewhat romantically believe that people can still form a band and write one or two shit hot tunes and someone somewhere would pay attention.
Whereas he reckoned that nowadays noone pays any attention to unsolicited mail and it's all based on networking and gigging. What do you reckon? I heard The Holograms got signed 45 minutes after sending a label an email with their video attached.