When Did People’s Music Standards get so low?

There’s a whole South Park episode about this.

It’s sad people these days seem to enjoy wallowing in the gutter. Nobody wants to challenge themselves or broaden their horizons.

All of the good music is underground or independently released. What is being pushed onto us by major labels and media outlets tends to suck. It's always been like this but it has gotten worse because less people are buying the good music. So the low-effort stuff is getting more heavily promoted today.

I heard a Harry Styles song on the radio the other day and I liked it. I only know him from DL...yes, I’m over 40.

Music is not as valued today as it was in the past. Music is taken for granted by many. Think about it, in the past music was much more of a social thing and album releases were big events. Now thanks to the internet and downloading and streaming, it's not as big of a deal. Also video games, Netflix, and YouTube and other social media have replaced music as a form of recreation for teenagers.

When I was a teen in the 90's everyone took music so seriously.

Also social media and "relatable" personalities have infiltrated pop music. So many barely talented people (I refuse to say "artist" or even "performers") are getting record deals. The music industry lost so much money from illegal downloading and streaming that they are desperate. American Idol and YouTube started this trend actually of people getting popular and record deals for their looks and likability rather than technical skills. While there have always been pretty and vapid but low-talent teen idols who got record deals dating back to the 1950s with the advent of television and further pushed by MTV in the 80s, they never lasted long because there was no technology to make them sound "good". Now social media has kept the likes of Bieber and Chris Brown still popular and in the public eye when had they debuted 30 or even 20 years ago they would have been over and forgotten in 3 years max.

Pop music has been bad since the late 1940s

"Kids, get off my lawn," I used to say. Then Pandora threw "Panic at the Disco Radio" at me, and now I can't take a shower without them.

The Kids are Alright.

Also when major music publications like Billboard, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork etc. jumped on the "poptimism" bandwagon and got into politics instead of objectively critiquing albums on their artistic merit and effort. Also people started taking shit like The Grammys seriously. The fact mainstream media began legitimizing music that is clearly manufactured and soulless and people who don't like corporate Top 40 stuff got branded as "hipsters", "snobs" and "contrarians" or even worse called "racist" or "misogynist" (never mind if they love jazz, old school hip-hop, female singer-songwriter and Riot grrl rock)

I actually think Gen Z has a wider taste of music than previous generations because of the Internet. I've heard some talk about Frank Zappa, The Bee Gees, The Thompson Twins, Led Zeppelin, Bjork, Oasis, Cab Calloway, etc. Thanks to memes and Internet culture, there is a genuine appreciation for Rick James, George Michael, Toto, Billy Ocean, Yes, Fleetwood Mac, Rick Astley and older Japanese music. I know many young jazz musicians who love Coltrane, Davis and Mingus.

The Internet certainly helped expose younger people to a diverse array of music. But you still have to seek it out.

A lot of the most exciting things right now seem to be in the electronic genres like chillwave, hypnogogic pop, bedroom music, vaporwave, hyperpop, bubblegum bass, etc.