By the way this article if someone read it, is not about a nostagic old dude complaining...it is an objective description of the business power over music...
The reduction of a part of popular music to commercial means and goals...This make "commercial" music product completely new product for the consumers, where music play a secondary role and is often ugly...
It make sense to me...
«The reality today is that the music industry makes money off of everything other than the music, if it makes money at all. Concert tickets, tour revenue, product tie-ins and licenses, and swag at all the events are the real money makers. The corporate suits and conglomerate clowns who came to own and operate the major music businesses were not only musically deaf and dumb, but also greedy, lazy, and unwilling to change.
The music business has always been about the business first and the music as an afterthought, but the industry didn’t really take care of either one for many years. The music execs made three main mistakes, which are just as likely to cause problems in your business if you’re not careful....
--- First, much like the movie business -- with its franchises and tentpole films -- the labels constantly pushed the talent for more and more of the same.
---Second, the head honchos were completely risk averse and unwilling to invest in anything other than the very sure thing that their current catalog of music represented. New delivery methods, new production technologies, new channels to reach their users were all available, but none of the old-line traditional players stepped up. Instead, they left the field wide open for Apple and other tech companies to develop innovative and attractive new solutions.
----And finally, with the emergence of streaming and fixed algorithmic systems for radio play, the industry bean counters discovered a fundamental truth: They were being paid exactly the same amount per song whether the song was brand new or 50 years old. They quickly concluded that if their customers (stations and streamers) were indifferent to the age of the content and the end users were actually looking for the older music, there was little or no reason to rock the boat and push for new material. Investing in new talent turned out to be an incremental cost which they chose to avoid. »
I will add to that the ethical and esthetical imperative to educate people about music, were no more supported by corporations and way less so by radio and TV ... We must educated ourselves...It is possible more than ever with internet for example ... But we are alone here....
There is more better musical choices possible than ever in the past, but there is less musical education in media and in school than ever...
And popular music was vampirized by commercial musical marketing and productions tools in the hand of non musicians but businessmen... For sure...
Here an exemple of a popular piece of the highest quality which had nothing to do with commercial music chain ugly meaningless production...