as an active musician (and having been one for 15 years) i personally almost never find myself using fades on the macro level. i think they're super useful for

as an active musician (and having been one for 15 years) i personally almost never find myself using fades on the macro level. i think they're super useful for controlling the build up and release of tension throughout the song but i tend to prefer a cold close just because of how sudden it is. now, i do sometimes use tape stops to end sections or songs, and you can consider those to be a fade in terms of the pitch and speed, if you view fade in the most general terms as an envelope that is decaying over a period of time automating a specific parameter. to me i think it's less that fades have become less popular and more that they have found more application in modulating tension across different tonal aspects (pitch, duration, filter cutoff, really anything that can be automated) and a lot of that is a side effect of moving to a more digital culture where the idea of patch bays and plugging generators into each other is a lot cheaper since you no longer have to buy all the expensive hardware to do so.