No weed and no XBox on my part... ;-) and proud owner of 1000s of CDs and Vinyls and attendee of around 1000 live shows...

I think the problem is the declining quality of releases and the increasing quantity.
There's also the problem of marketing. Bands have to reach out to their audience. Since there's not much radio and TV coverage, artists have to go out and play to be able to sell records. Since many aor "bands" are "studio only" projects, this is not going to work for them.