Closing the database?

I think there are two distinct strains of 'prog' that could be usefully separated.

1. Truly progressive acts, which in the modern era would mean Goldfrapp (at her best), Mercury Rev, Steven Wilson, The Besnard Lakes, Explosions In The Sky, and the like.

2. Bands that hark back to the classic 'prog' era of the 70s and try to recreate it (which I regard as NOT progressive!). Bands I'd put in that category - and this is in no way a reflection on the quality of their rock music - would be artists like IQ and Big Big Train.

There's a lot more to be said about progressive genres (let's not forget that soul music in the form  of The Temptations post-69, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, etc, were truly progressive in every sense that we mean by it), but I'd best leave it there for now, as a noob!

I think problem is not in new music, new prog  music, genre debates (i believe it's some kind of crying of people that too old to check new music, u know, it's ok thing when we get older then 30\35 for most people, some people have than problem younger or later).

Problem in database, that need hands to support it, update it, why you making own database when you have lots of databases, like RYM, discogs, musicbrain etc, maybe it's wasting of time and resources? Maybe PA need some integration to free resources for reviews, ratings, topics, comments?

If we insist that Prog Archives is 'your ultimate prog ROCK resource', yes the policy in adding new bands to the database may be more strict. But if the current prog is less rocky than before, if the idea of prog widens and even slightly gets blurred, why not to replace with 'your ultimate prog MUSIC resource'? And why a delution of prog into pop cannot be considered a delution of pop into prog? Depends on visual angle I'd say...

As for me, it's more important to know how good or bad the album is, regardless of its "progressiveness".

Wrote a whole long thing that captcha deleted, but the gist is that I agree with most of the points here. I think prog is still expanding, and I think Wobbler's latest masterpiece is a great indication as to why the database should remain open.

The other part was in support of this idea. Both of our brother/sister/whatnot websites, Jazz Archives and Metal Music Archives, do genre tags by album, and I think it's a great idea that helps increase specificity and clarity of the website. I see it being useful for ProgArchives in two cases: for bands who, despite having some incredible prog releases, have long periods in which very little or none of their material was prog (e.g. Genesis, Queen, Queensrÿche); and for bands who span various prog sub-genres. There are several examples of this last one, like King Crimson, Kayo Dot, Anathema, Oceansize, and more, but the most notable one in my mind is Porcupine Tree. I was honestly surprised when I first saw them categorised as heavy prog on the website, because their first four albums, as well as most of their releases from their early days (1991-1997) are almost undeniably psych-prog/space rock.

I do think though that with all the subgenres and some bands we've included that we've cast too wide a net and diluted the meaning of progressive rock...but hey...that genie's out of the bottle so there's nothing to be done but scour the PA database to find bands you like and skip the rest...