Your "economical principle", though, heavily relies on familiarity with both commercial and free material, and you're not building up your position by refusing to listen to either of them.
And when did I ever say I "hated" Cameron? Actually, I'm not the only one in my opinion that his latest one was a pure, shitty cheesefest while some of his earlier work actually had some quality to it.
And yea, that's the whole point, the "ungodly" amount of people lining up to see Avatar is NOT, ANY sort of indication for how good the movie is objectively, or ANY sort of indicator for my opinion on it.
People previous stormed into the theaters to see the Star Wars prequels, and they sucked. I have NOT REASON WHATSOEVER to believe that just because a bunch of people pays for some commercial, hyped release, it's going to be ANY good.
I could've picked a random amateur production on Youtube and it wouldn't be any more likely to contain some dumbass plot contrivances and cheesy dialog.
As for the music examples in the OP, can't say I particularly liked any of those - the second two were quite "nice", the second "rock" one sucked (and not just because of the video).
IG88 (the last one) was pretty appealing. Pretty much the same what I get from commercial releases of this sort, some of it is plain embarassing and sucks my balls, some is nice and decent, some is original, fun and awesome.
No difference at all. I remember going through some metal bands on MySpace, some of which were non-commercial (at that point), and I did enjoy quite a bunch of that stuff. Listening to "Vader", on the other hand, makes me puke (it's just an impression I got way back, though, not offering this as valid criticism).
Also listened to some stuff by the OP - the first track started with rock-ish part with somewhat sloppy, but certainly fun fast-pased singing in the style heavily reminding me of The Hives - remember watching some of their (and other rock bands') live shows and the vocal work there is just as unpolished, but "entertaining".
Some nice, catchy stuff there, but nothing I could personally get into or "show all my friends".
This is a non-commercial recording (certainly given away for free on Youtube), not sure about the recital itself, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdP90ITgFo
From what I could find out, this guy still does his music master at some conservatory. A lot of high quality performances at conservatories are completely free.
The guy certainly knows what he's doing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzgOf97kZ-4
Have no doubt he could've easily afforded a better camera, though - lazy prick :)