1. Old music isn't going away. At this point in technology everything that has ever been recorded is accessible at all times so consumers can listen to whatever they want. Anything new has to at least meet the standard of the best of the last 100 years. This has created a highly individualized music consumption experience. There is no dominant mainstream and no central focus. Lots of mediocre musicians are able to find a small audience and persist. It is a festival with no main stage, just thousands of cubicles.

2. We are at the end of time. Meaning that for the last 20 years there has been no further evolution of music. So even new music is not new. Everyone can easily and immediately identify a song from the 30s,40s,50s, early 60s, late 60s and so on. From this view one can see that music stopped evolving after the turn of the century. Everything "new" is some shade of retro or just the same computer-produced carbon copy of post "2000" 'sound. It is very difficult to identify when music was made in the last 20 years it all sounds exactly the same.

3. Music is too dangerous to be left to the serfs. Music has tremendous power to create change. The entire music creation and distribution ecosystem has been captured by the ultra-rich monopolies. New mass music is self-selected to be meaningless, useless and impotent. Background noise for commercials. In the past music spoke to an audience and fueled cultural evolution and shaped priorities. Rock and Roll was often credited with uniting people across political divides and functioned as a form of international diplomacy. The way music is consumed now is much more of an isolating factor than a uniting one. Headphones in public and at home tend to limit interpersonal interaction and increase the sense of atomization and despair. Mass music is often wrapped in a consumerist aura. Any new (or old) music that distracts from a pro-consumerist mentality or encourages political engagement would pose a threat to the current order and is censored by the system. Music is the cheese in the big tech's mousetrap. Selling your eyes (and ears) to advertisers is the outcome.

4. People mostly live in apartments now. In the post WW2 period (1950s-1980s) the majority of people in the United States did not live in cities. They lived in suburbs or rural areas. This allowed for young people to play instruments without disturbing neighbors excessively. There were basements and garages that functioned as rehearsal studios. There was also much more disposable income for instruments and lessons. This created a culture of expression. A culture of culture... in film, literature and music. Over the last 30 years economic realities, demographics and living conditions have changed significantly. People mostly live in apartments, where band practices are not very popular. People have much less disposable income. There are many new financial burdens that didn't exist such as student debt, cellphone bills, streaming and internet bills. The rate of compensation has remained flat while the cost of living overall has skyrocketed (housing, education, healthcare). In general people are having to spend much more time trying to survive and there is less opportunity to develop the skills needed to make music of the quality that was made in the past. Musicians that create recordings often do so under less than ideal conditions and often in isolation rather than as a band. I think the sound of people playing together and regularly before an audience of their peers is what makes music sound good. It is is the natural evolution for musicians and performers of all kinds and it is what makes music feel good.

As a society we are not creating the opportunity for this to happen and we are all poorer for it.

So in summary... that is why I think today's music sucks and will be forgotten instantly.