Has social media destroyed music?

DareGod

Lately, the music industry seems to be focused primarily on getting hits on social media.

Whichever popstar or performer can create the most fuss on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook, get the most comments, the most shares, the most likes, earn the most mentions on celebrity news websites as a result of being involved drama of some sort, is the person who seems to sell the most downloads on iTunes, regardless of whether the music is truly any good or is bringing any real joy to anyone.

It's repulsive and pathetic. But it brings in the revenue, and so it's now a highly used business model.

But what about the music?

I miss the days when artists used to create an album, promote the music, tour it, and the music had to be good. Fans would buy the record and it would touch them, it would speak to their soul, it hit a nerve with them and they truly appreciated the art of it.

There was none of this vapid social media "Likes"-whoring nonsense involved. Or, at least, to not anywhere near the extent that there is today.

People listened to an album from start to finish, and while listening to it, you could feel the quality and the effort, the heart and the soul, that went into creating it. The music scene these days is practically devoid of all those things.

These days it's all about creating a fuss online, getting social media mentions and hits, and having a fast-selling 3-minute song on iTunes. Suck a load of w*nk and I'm personally sick to the back teeth of it.

Thoughts?

Ice Maiden

Crappy pop music has always been around - it's just that in my opinion social media helps to amplify it.
There is still plenty of great music out there - which social media, or at least the internet, helps people source much more easily now.

Junkyard Tom

One man's crappy pop music is another.. man's.... freedom fighter?

Dammit, you know what I mean.

super_furry

It's always been about having a fast selling three minutes song.

chrissb8

If anything it has helped. Earliest point in case: Arctic Monkeys 1st album released on MySpace. Not saying they wouldn't have gotten big but releasing an album online for free helped alot. Alot of good musicians before hand weren't heard off the whim of record labels or other "experts" who didn't like them. Alot more crap but alot more choice. Positives outweighs the bad. Good music is still good music flashy quirky video or big marketing campaign it always comes down to the music. Strip away everything it's all about the music.

Custardpi

super_furry wrote: »

It's always been about having a fast selling three minutes song.

Not always. For a few brief years it was also about having a guitar solo the length of an acid trip.

On another note I wonder how various late musicians would have dealt with social media. I reckon John Lennon's Instragram would be full of lame "inspirational" type photos while Sid Vicious's Twitter feed would mostly consist of expletive filled rants & public spats between him & Nancy.

lertsnim

The ****e music is easily avoidable.

MEGA BRO WOLF 5000

D'ya know who's insufferable?

Beyoncé. That's who. And that mega gowl Kanye West. And Lady Gaga...and Pink... I'm no hipster but 90% of pop music is actually terrible. I don't blame social media, it's just people are getting stupider...we have a generation of people growing up idolising the kardashians and those spaz faced ultra cùnts on Geordie shore and the like. The world is getting stupider and they have to be spoon fed their music that could honestly be composed by a three year old and sung better than your transition year choir teacher.

Lights On

This might not be in your case OP, but I've found for the most part that the people who complain about music these days are the same people who don't actively look for any to listen to and still just base their opinion on what the radio is playing or what gets the most hits on YouTube, Facebook etc.

There's more good music being produced these days than there has been for a very long time, and thanks to social media, blogs & forums it's a whole lot more accessible than it would have been pre Internet where you'd have to read magazine or get told about it from someone you knew.

Social media has vastly improved the music I listen to.

Growing up, I was in a class with other kids who listened to Guns n Roses, Prince, U2, Whitney Houston...we had no great diversity, it was all driven by the charts and radio playing what was in the charts. At University, it seemed like everyone liked grunge, indie...again nothing I particularly liked, and really driven by NME etc.

But now, on social media, I have friends who like what I like, IDM, electronica, ambient. I look back on the days when we only had the 20 or 30 songs on 2FM or Atlantic 252's playlist and shudder. I spent whole months having to listen to Oh Mary, Celebrate, Sweet Child O Mine, I Wanna Dance With Somebody etc. etc...it was depressing.

Nodin

Deleted User wrote: »

Social media has vastly improved the music I listen to.

Growing up, I was in a class with other kids who listened to Guns n Roses, Prince, U2, Whitney Houston...we had no great diversity, it was all driven by the charts and radio playing what was in the charts. At University, it seemed like everyone liked grunge, indie...again nothing I particularly liked, and really driven by NME etc.

But now, on social media, I have friends who like what I like, IDM, electronica, ambient. I look back on the days when we only had the 20 or 30 songs on 2FM or Atlantic 252's playlist and shudder. I spent whole months having to listen to Oh Mary, Celebrate, Sweet Child O Mine, I Wanna Dance With Somebody etc. etc...it was depressing.

The never ending playlist of doom.

Kev W

"I remember when it used to be just about the music, now it's all about trying to sell those ugly black things, what are they called? Records I think."

Music on the whole is no better or worse. You just got older and it stopped being aimed at you.

kfallon

Deleted User wrote: »

the 20 or 30 songs on 2FM or Atlantic 252's playlist and shudder.

Soul Asylum - Runaway Train
Bryan Adams - Whatever I do
Wet Wet Wet - Love is all Around
East 17 - Alright
Richard Marx - Hazard

If I ever hear any of those songs replayed I immediately think of Atlantic 252!!! Still, at least the DJ's didn't talk much but they spent ages talking about how they never talked :rolleyes:

Anyone remember Satellite Jukebox on TV? Especially when it was the 'durty' videos they played, boobs & music, a perfect combo :pac:

sabat

It's certainly brought about the end of one of popular music's most important features-idiosyncratic regional scenes developing in semi-isolation from the mainstream which allowed fresh styles space to flourish. When's the last time you heard of a new genre with the name of a city attached to or associated with it? I'm talking about Chicago House, Philly Soul, Madchester, Sheffield Electronica, grunge from Seattle etc.

ancapailldorcha

Sadly this is just the result of narcissism enabled be social media. Likes, retweets and favourites are just ways to shove what you're peddling down peoples' throats and the indications are they can't get enough of it so it is a trend which will sadly continue until the next evolution of social media.

osarusan

Music videos and MTV probably did more damage in terms of talentless but beautiful 'musicians' getting exposure.

Social media helps with the all out sales pitch/assault on young music listeners though.

Kev W

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Sadly this is just the result of narcissism enabled be social media. Likes, retweets and favourites are just ways to shove what you're peddling down peoples' throats and the indications are they can't get enough of it so it is a trend which will sadly continue until the next evolution of social media.

If you think retweets and likes constitute shoving anything down peoples throats then you either don't understand how social media works or don't understand the term "shoved down peoples throats".

RichardoKhan

Pop will eat itself..........& I dont mean the band.....

NIMAN

I stopped slagging off 'other' music a long time ago. (by other I mean stuff I don't like).

Music is subjective. Like films, cars etc. What you like doesn't make it great or the best. It makes it your taste, others will think its rubbish, you will think their's is rubbish.

People don't listen to 'other' music to spite you, but because they like it.

We all get old and think the youngsters music is rubbish. Our parents did it to us, now we are doing it to the generation behind. They will do it to the next etc etc.

Custardpi

Lights On wrote: »

There's more good music being produced these days than there has been for a very long time, and thanks to social media, blogs & forums it's a whole lot more accessible than it would have been pre Internet where you'd have to read magazine or get told about it from someone you knew.

I'm skeptical about this claim to be honest. Certainly there's more music being produced these days - anyone with a laptop & a vague idea of software can try their hand at being the next Skilrex or whoever. It's undeniable too that there's a greater range of music available to curious listeners than ever before - I've personally gotten into a ton of stuff through the internet that I probably wouldn't have heard through the radio, even allowing for the likes of Dave Fanning, Mike Maloney, An Taobh Tuathaill etc.

However, does the greater amount of music & its greater availability automatically translate into good music being produced today? While I'd agree that there can be a tendency (often greatly exaggerated) among some people to label anything from their youth as representing artistic greatness & to label more modern music as by the numbers dross I think there can also be those who fall into the opposite trap i.e. giving newer music more praise than it deserves by comparison by what went before while dismissing any naysayers as fuddy duddies who just need to get with it & recognise how good the Emperor's new tunes sound.

The idea that the quality of music essentially remains constant & that people just get old has never really been one that convinced me as it's too simplistic & fails to consider the possibility that artistic expression can have periods of greatness & also periods where things become tired & stale, regardless of the quantity of artists around.

I'd listen to a pretty wide range of music going from the late 40s to present day stuff & also a small amount of classical music & I've come to the belief that the heyday of the longplay vinyl record i.e. from the late 50s/early 60s to the oil crisis of the mid 70s represented an artistic high point in human history in terms of the music which was produced with a well funded industry's backing & a medium which allowed for a deeper exploration of sonic ideas (listeners only had to come out of their reveries once every 20 minutes or so rather than every 5 or whatever the length of a 45 or 78 would be) which if the artist was lucky enough to be in the employ of a decent company would contain well recorded sound & be made of quality material. Albums like "The Court Of The Crimson King" & "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" could really only have been produced during this period.

I don't praise that era because it was the time of my youth - it wasn't - but rather because I've listened & compared it to other time periods including this one & I honestly believe it comes out on top in terms of artistic achievement, even allowing for the amount of ****e music around at the time (which is something I do believe remains pretty constant).

Ultimately however I think it can be hard to judge objectively the quality of music from a period while still living in that time. Often art needs to be listened to, forgotten about, rediscovered & reevaluated before being recognised as the quality work which it is - a process which the distance of years, decades or even centuries can help e.g. virtually no one was interested in the Velvet Underground's first album when it was released - they're now regarded as one of the great groups of their time.

It's possible that in years & eras to come music that today is regarded as not worthy of notice or positively awful will come to merit reappraisal & be lauded by our descendants as the artistic masterpieces we were too busy or tone deaf to notice. Who knows, perhaps some of the prestigious music schools of 2116 will contain a chair of Justin Bieber Studies.

GLaDOS

Lots of good music being made that I enjoy but I have weird taste in music.

NIMAN

There was good music in the 60s, there was bad music in the 60s
There was good music in the 70s, there was bad music in the 70s
There was good music in the 80s, there was bad music in the 80s
There was good music in the 90s, there was bad music in the 90s
There was good music in the 00s, there was bad music in the 00s
.
.
.
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.
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Rothko

No, not at all.

Ice Maiden

I know there has always been crap chart music but The X Factor and the like have generated even more.

I also don't agree musical quality is always subjective. Dickens was a better writer than the one who wrote Fifty Shades Of Grey, even if plenty of people prefer the latter to the works of Dickens.

valoren

NIMAN wrote: »

There was good music in the 60s, there was bad music in the 60s
There was good music in the 70s, there was bad music in the 70s
There was good music in the 80s, there was bad music in the 80s
There was good music in the 90s, there was bad music in the 90s
There was good music in the 00s, there was bad music in the 00s
.
.
.
.
.
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This.

It's a selective bias thing.

In 20 years, retro music channels will be playing the likes Adele 'Hello' and not generic crap like Ellie Goulding 'On my mind'.
And people will think, gee, the music in the noughteens was epic! Music today is shiite.

jiltloop

Deleted User wrote: »

Social media has vastly improved the music I listen to.

Growing up, I was in a class with other kids who listened to Guns n Roses, Prince, U2, Whitney Houston...we had no great diversity, it was all driven by the charts and radio playing what was in the charts. At University, it seemed like everyone liked grunge, indie...again nothing I particularly liked, and really driven by NME etc.

But now, on social media, I have friends who like what I like, IDM, electronica, ambient. I look back on the days when we only had the 20 or 30 songs on 2FM or Atlantic 252's playlist and shudder. I spent whole months having to listen to Oh Mary, Celebrate, Sweet Child O Mine, I Wanna Dance With Somebody etc. etc...it was depressing.

I was in the same boat as you until I discovered pirate radio stations and blank cassette tapes! That's how I discovered the world of electronic music. It was hard work but very rewarding. You'd hear a bit of a song but miss the name of the song or artist and spend weeks trying to find out who it was. No Shazam back then!

Mr. CooL ICE

Can't relate OP. Only time any of those ones pop up on my facebook timeline is when someone likes some stupid buzzfeed or her.ie article. I just ignore and scroll down.

On the other hand, social media has helped underground bands. Take Party Cannon, a death metal band from Scotland who have gone viral a few times at this stage because their logo is incredibly silly. They just happen to be a hard working band, but the social media exposure definitely helps.

jiltloop

RichardoKhan wrote: »

Pop will eat itself..........& I dont mean the band.....

Nah, pop will never eat itself because there's a never ending supply of vacuous people who like trends more than music.

Pop will always eat good underground music and regurgitate it until the stolen sounds are a parody of themselves and wait for the next underground movement so it can repeat the process.

Aongus Von Heisenberg

I don't think Social Media has destroyed music: it may just amplify the annoyance of the musical mainstream becoming debased as you get the rubbish beamed straight onto your social media feed.

I think the musical mainstream became debased a little before social media, maybe around 1995-2005.

If you watch Reeling in the Years good music that did well in the charts is present all through the decades then at some point around the late 1990's chart music becomes manufactured rubbish and quality is banished to the fringes, with occasional admirable exceptions.

I remember on Top 30 hits in the mid 90's you could see excellent Rock, Dance and Hip-Hop all getting fairly high in the charts whereas since then sales have become overwhelmingly dominated by pop and pop-ified versions of the other genres (eg Avicii for electronic music, Chart R&B appropriating the stylings of Hip-Hop, bland guitar music from guys who look like they're in a boy band). Even Pop, a genre that once included Bowie FFS,is now synonymous with risible tat.

If anything Social Media pushes back against this trend somewhat as you can hunt down good music with a bit of effort, it's just harder to avoid the moronic cacaphony that has occupied the mainstream.

jungleman

Kind of agree with OP a *little* bit. Some music videos have way more production than the actual songs themselves.

I remember when the music video for Californication was the best thing ever. At least it had a cracking song to back it up.

Any songs, or "artists" (I hate when morons like Miley Cyrus describe themselves as artists) who rely on social media to sell their crap is the kind of stuff I wouldn't listen to anyway.

For me, I just have to dig a little bit deeper to find cool new stuff. Recently I've found Burning Hearts, Helicopter Helicopter, Susanne Sundfor, and Aqualung. They're amazing musicians, all with a fairly low social media profile. Ya just gotta keep digging, you'll find the good stuff eventually. Kind of like a jam doughnut. Get to the jam.

NIMAN

Ice Maiden wrote: »

I know there has always been crap chart music but The X Factor and the like have generated even more.

Before X-Factor it was Stock, Aitken and Waterman getting the abuse for crap music.

Before that we had TV talent shows too.

There will always be something to blame.

Boom_Bap

Social Media is another outlet for musicans/labels to deliver music, it used to be radio and tv. Some people may be too young to know that the M in MTV stands for music as it rarely plays music.
Social media is being used aggressively as any musician who wants to earn money needs to seel records. Keeping links to the iTunes page on social media keeps clicks going in that direction instead of illegal downloads.

Ice Maiden

NIMAN wrote: »

Before X-Factor it was Stock, Aitken and Waterman getting the abuse for crap music.

Before that we had TV talent shows too.

There will always be something to blame.

I think the volume of crappy music in the charts has increased though (and the reverse). It's not an age thing, as I've thought it since I was 13. People like The Beatles and David Bowie and The Jam used to be chart/pop music. You simply would not find that calibre of music in the charts now.

NIMAN

Ice Maiden wrote: »

I think the volume of crappy music in the charts has increased though (and the reverse). It's not an age thing, as I've thought it since I was 13. People like The Beatles and David Bowie and The Jam used to be chart/pop music. You simply would not find that calibre of music in the charts now.

But my point is that not everyone likes The Beatles, The Jam or David Bowie. To some, that music is awful.

Hammer89

Anyone who thinks modern-day music is gone down the toilet clearly hasn't heard Shake it Off, which genuinly one of my favourite songs ever. If they have and still think it's doomed, they're just being a bit hipster-ish. Up until 2011 or so, Lady Gaga could've sang over a beat comprised of Jihadi John rants and pussy farts, and it'd still be an absolute choon. She and her team had the midas touch for a while there.

Basically, modern-day music breeds an obscene amount of snobbery in my opinion. "Man f*ck Justin Bieber. Let's take it back to the 1920s and listen to Chubby Checker." Let's not, because he's sh*t.

No not at all, its made music more democratic and had take away a lot of the mystic surrounding making music if anything.

parttime

The Honey Monster wrote: »

D'ya know who's insufferable?

Beyoncé. That's who. And that mega gowl Kanye West. And Lady Gaga...and Pink... I'm no hipster but 90% of pop music is actually terrible. I don't blame social media, it's just people are getting stupider...we have a generation of people growing up idolising the kardashians and those spaz faced ultra cùnts on Geordie shore and the like. The world is getting stupider and they have to be spoon fed their music that could honestly be composed by a three year old and sung better than your transition year choir teacher.

Can I subscribe to your newsletter or blog or something?
Love this" spaz faced ultra cùnts"
Excellent rant, could'nt agree more.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Always felt the industry got into trouble once physical sales went into massive decline in the early part of the century. I think proper bands found it harder to get a break when the smaller labels began disappearing.

Rothko

Hammer89 wrote: »

Anyone who thinks modern-day music is gone down the toilet clearly hasn't heard Shake it Off, which genuinly one of my favourite songs ever. If they have and still think it's doomed, they're just being a bit hipster-ish. Up until 2011 or so, Lady Gaga could've sang over a beat comprised of Jihadi John rants and pussy farts, and it'd still be an absolute choon. She and her team had the midas touch for a while there.

Basically, modern-day music breeds an obscene amount of snobbery in my opinion. "Man f*ck Justin Bieber. Let's take it back to the 1920s and listen to Chubby Checker." Let's not, because he's sh*t.

Or perhaps they have a different opinion. Just like you do about Chubby Checker.

riclad

There,s lots of great singers out there ,they may not be the next taylor swift.
New singers can put up songs on youtube ,soundcloud etc
theres a wide range of music on the web,
before if you had no record deal or no one to push your music on radio
you had no chance of making a living .
Now you can go on social media ,and get support from fans on patreon without going near a big record company .
its not justin beiber theres loads of singers like grimes ,lana del rey ,fka twigs , all sorts of singers that mix different genres .
Theres more to music than beyonce ,katy perry or bieber .
Many groups were ripped off in the 80,s and the 90,s cos you had to get a record contract in order to sell any cds, or make a living.
Look on pitchfork.com or rolling stone.com or stereogum,com if you want
to see a wider range of music .

IF you listen to music in the top 40 you may be have a limited view of what,s out there .

Riesen_Meal

Saw this on FB and thought it was quite relevant to the discussion :

http://i.imgur.com/hXtsWSP

Lights On

Fieldog wrote: »

Saw this on FB and thought it was quite relevant to the discussion :

http://i.imgur.com/hXtsWSP

People still buy music, Adele selling 15 million albums in less than 6 months is the most extreme example of that. Sure sales have dropped off, streaming is the biggest reason for that imo, not that people don't want to pay, it's just that they'd rather use a Netflix type model where they pay a fee to get all they want.

But the rise in vinyl sales shows people moving back to records, though how long it will last is anybody's guess, so it's still being paid for. Just not every album is going platinum nowadays, which is a good thing really because if you take a look at some of the albums that were selling a million plus copies back in the day, a lot of them were utter garbage(and a lot doing it today still are!)

Not really a fair comparison either to be honest. Why not have a picture of Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens & FKA twigs at the bottom?

Rothko

riclad wrote: »

There,s lots of great singers out there ,they may not be the next taylor swift.
New singers can put up songs on youtube ,soundcloud etc
theres a wide range of music on the web,
before if you had no record deal or no one to push your music on radio
you had no chance of making a living .
Now you can go on social media ,and get support from fans on patreon without going near a big record company .
its not justin beiber theres loads of singers like grimes ,lana del rey ,fka twigs , all sorts of singers that mix different genres .
Theres more to music than beyonce ,katy perry or bieber .
Many groups were ripped off in the 80,s and the 90,s cos you had to get a record contract in order to sell any cds, or make a living.
Look on pitchfork.com or rolling stone.com or stereogum,com if you want
to see a wider range of music .

IF you listen to music in the top 40 you may be have a limited view of what,s out there .

Agree with most of what you say but I wouldn't recommend Rolling Stone to anyone if they want to find new music.

Fieldog wrote: »

Saw this on FB and thought it was quite relevant to the discussion :

http://i.imgur.com/hXtsWSP

Says a lot when the person can't even spell paid right. Anyway back then you also had crap like the Osmonds and Pat Boone.

Rothko

Lights On wrote: »

Not really a fair comparison either to be honest. Why not have a picture of Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens & FKA twigs at the bottom?

Because the person who created the image has probably never heard any of them

ScumLord

Music is an art form, like painting, that's run its course. The synthesiser was the last new development in music and it was the death nail, there are no new sounds left. From now on its just a case of using what's already been done to make a slight variation within the boundaries of copyright. Music is just being standardised into helpful categories so that the industry can sell an identity to people and plenty of people seem happy enough to stick to their assigned musical genre, thinking that makes them unique when all it does is limit their ability to enjoy anything that hasn't been spoon feed to them.

entropi

Lights On wrote: »

There's more good music being produced these days than there has been for a very long time, and thanks to social media, blogs & forums it's a whole lot more accessible than it would have been pre Internet where you'd have to read magazine or get told about it from someone you knew.

Sadly, the majority of times the stuff people get to hear is the vapid, soulless crap that you hear on radio and music stations on TV which people accept as the norm, when it's really just mass produced filler to create $$ for the record companies. The good stuff needs to be searched for, still needs word of mouth to pass around and be heard. People will always follow what their favourite artists are doing anyway.

bnt

The subject says "music", but the OP says "the music industry". Two different things entirely. Plenty of great music is being made outside the "music industry", who are getting so desperate they want a chunk of what you make from live gigs, in the so-called 360 deal.

colossus-x

Contemporary pop music is about how low you can get your booty to the ground and shake it without falling over.

EuropeanSon

Ice Maiden wrote: »

I think the volume of crappy music in the charts has increased though (and the reverse). It's not an age thing, as I've thought it since I was 13. People like The Beatles and David Bowie and The Jam used to be chart/pop music. You simply would not find that calibre of music in the charts now.

You need to have a listen to the last few Kanye albums.

Custardpi

As I've said previously on this thread I don't think that anyone should be in doubt that there has been crappy music in all generations, probably roughly in the same proportions. Chances are that while Bach was composing The Brandenburg Concertos he would have passed a few bierstubs from which emitted the Germanic folk equivalent of One Direction. Equally, every era will have skilled musicians who are dedicated to their art & who can produce music to a high standard.

However, I would maintain that for any artform to rise above mere high standards & achieve a level of greatness which will stand the test of time (something which only happens periodically in my opinion) two main factors need to be present - an industry or interested benefactors who have large amounts of spare cash & a willingness to both take risks with the artform while at the same time build something timeless with it. The latter factor is often closely related to the first.

An era in which an artform has parsimonious purse string holders & where disposability & instant gratification are valued above all else will find it difficult to achieve greatness by contrast. There is a reason why some of the greatest art of human history was produced during the Italian Rennaissance. It's the same reason why we're currently living through what I firmly believe will be looked on as a golden age of television (or whatever television eventually evolves into). An industry/society prepared to risk the necessary funds to create the likes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling or Breaking Bad, creators with a desire to both experiment & produce something worthy of permanence & of course an audience receptive & patient enough to make those ideas a success. Of course, in both cases it was impossible for the artists involved to truly know how their work would be regarded in the years/centuries after they were gone. We probably need a distance of at least a couple of decades to pronounce any way definitively on the painting, music, tv, film etc of a particular era.

So what does that mean for music in the current era? Well for one thing there is a hell of a lot less money floating around than there used to be. Bands which are lucky enough to secure record deals have some sort of financial cushion but it's usually not that much & they'll generally have to tour relentlessly, not to mention flog tons of merchandise to make a decent living. If you self-publish then the same will apply only to a far greater extent. There is both far less time & certainly far less industry tolerance for professional musicians to piss about in the studio on the company's dime in the hopes that something marvelous will result. This is unfortunate as this process, while often extremely wasteful has produced some of the greatest music of the past century - The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds probably being one of the best known examples.

Agricola

Ice Maiden wrote: »

I think the volume of crappy music in the charts has increased though (and the reverse). It's not an age thing, as I've thought it since I was 13. People like The Beatles and David Bowie and The Jam used to be chart/pop music. You simply would not find that calibre of music in the charts now.

Agree, Bowie was a great example. Time was he was mainstream pop and very successful at it. Mainstream music used to have actual "artists" for want of a better word, who often had something to say.
It seems to me its a perfect storm of the internet, (death of physical media and collapse of revenues) social media, a young generation of "musicians" who have only ever known prosperity and have nothing to sing about, and simon cowell's x-factor promoting fame for fame's sake despite actual talent

No doubt there are people on the fringes making good music but the point is unless you actually go seek it out, you won't know. Where once mainstream music had a lot of quality, it is now filled with a lot of absolute rubbish. It isn't as simple as "You're old now, deal with it!"