I think Izzy's departure is overstated and Steven the opposite.

Izzy was incredibly important in the 80s. His writing is all over Appetite and Lies, including some of their biggest hits. The band isn't completely helpless without him though, composing Jungle, It's So Easy and Rocket Queen. Also Paradise City and SCOM are not mainly Izzy songs.

On UYI he is still very prominent but he's not so much writing the big guns anymore. Don't Cry and YCBM yes, but those were written in the 80s. Clean Izzy brings 14 Years, Dust N Bones, DTJ, Bad Obsession, You Ain't the First, Perfect Crime and Pretty Tied Up to the table. Good songs, a few of them great, but these are Axl and Slash's albums. Most of the big songs are written by them alone or mostly alone.

Adler's drumming was imo more important to the sound of the band than Izzy. His writing also appear to have been of a lesser quality once he got off the drugs.

I think the name was the cause of all the trouble. Axl should never have exercised his legal right to usurp the band. He was secure either way. All it did was leaving Slash resentful and going for a power play that ruined their relationship. Writing wise I think they would have been more than fine to create a kick ass album in the mid 90s. Axl, Slash and Duff have always been the real core of the band, by virtue of being the only ones willing to commit to it.

Didn't know Nazareth was still going. McCafferty quit ten years ago and the only 70s member left is the bassist. I see from their chart positions they were quite big in my country up until the late 80s but I only ever heard Love Hurts. They're still releasing albums. It feels strange for a relatively big band to exist like everything is normal and you just don't hear about it. Not enough memorable hits I guess. 

76 is one of those dubious ages to die. Not really young but not all that old either. Anything past 60 is a win though.

Selection and ease is the winner for me. There is a lot of stuff I don't have on CD and some of the obscure stuff can be tough to find on pirate sites. It's also much easier to just search on Spotify when you get an impulse to try something out. I've discovered 2 major artists just in the last year doing that. I knew they existed, but was only familiar with the hits. Tried out their albums and discovered a bunch of great songs. I probably wouldn't even have bothered to download one of their albums.

I keep a selection of CDs for backup and the occasional high quality session.

That's a good point. When Axl did it, it sounded better.

It could be the case of somebody suggesting this to him as promotion for the release and it would be cool to finally do it. Would explain the haphazard result.

But he signed off on it. When George Lucas thought to himself "I want Greedo to shoot first", that's one thing, another is to the see the terrible final product and release it in theaters. SCOM was weird and out there, but the ideas made sense and sounded good for what they were. This is just a mess.