The thing that makes it sound so much like a fist-shaking "back in my day" is that it reduces modern music to popular, heavily-promoted, commercially-successful

The thing that makes it sound so much like a fist-shaking "back in my day" is that it reduces modern music to popular, heavily-promoted, commercially-successful popular music. There is money to be made out of superficial music, fit for consumption as a background to parties and dance, tailored for the least common denominator in terms of intellect. But that has always been the case; nostalgia aside, the "current" music of pretty much every decade has been pretty bad. Sure, the greatest hits are, well, great. But if you dig a little, you'll find that the songs that were just below the greatest hits in terms of popularity -- but hugely popular nonetheless! -- are pretty bad. But there are plenty of artists making good music today. And frankly, I think the current situation, where we have things like Bandcamp and Youtube and whatnot is better than ever before. If I'd been a teenager in the 1970s it's extremely unlikely that I'd have heard of bands like, say, Malicorne -- superb music but with success limited to their own country mostly. Nowadays, if there's a great band making great music in Ittoqqortoormiit, there's a good chance you can hear about them and listen to their stuff.