...minus the whole fact people have gotten signed due to newgrounds...

Agreed. Although, a lot of amateur tracks can sound just as good as pro tracks to their ears, because they have no idea what to listen for when it comes to mastering... Mastering: the audio production step that separates the amateur from the pro.

hmm.. yes.

yeah thats true. I think that if someone is a novice and makes a song with little to no mixing, i think a good review should look past the mixing and see if the song has potential with mixing

Weird but... ok. Yeah, I know ppl like that... they were assasinated by Notorious BIG, but yeah, I know ppl like dat. LOL

What the fuck is iamsicknerd talking about?

Give me a break. Signed bands emerge from local venues. Any true music fan recognizes that. If we didn't have signed music, we wouldn't know what a polished track sounds like, because where is the incentive to polish if you aren't going to get heard in the first place? The tracks at Newgrounds have a variable level of quality because not everyone seeks to polish everything they submit. It's understandable, given the liberty of the site. The usual dwellers of Newgrounds ought to recognize that as well.

However, I operate under the assumption that nobody at the Audio Portal is either a true music fan who understands the tricks of the signed band, or a regular dweller of Newgrounds who recognizes the musicians' perverse level of expressive freedom here. Thus, I don't complain about stupid people when I already know they're stupid. On the other hand, I operate under the other assumption that people are not stupid forever, that they can, in fact, learn about the kaleidoscope of music beyond the so-called "mainstream" as well as the underworld we're running into the ground locally. Hence I refuse to administer judgment upon them or prohibit them from hanging out in the Audio Portal.

I disagree with your sentiment: if someone rates music based on a commercial scale, then that's how someone's music is on a commercial scale. Not every scale is going to be the same. If I heard something that could pass as legit on the radio, I might comment about it. What I don't do is derail someone's ego over their inability to sound like a signed band. That's just narrow-sighted.