I think the article is right and wrong. The top 10 has degenerated as the population consuming music has broadened. Not that there's nothing ever good in there.

I think the article is right and wrong. The top 10 has degenerated as the population consuming music has broadened. Not that there's nothing ever good in there. But it is objectively simpler music, very barebones, a beat, 2 or 3 chords, no instrumental melody, autotune voice, meaningless lyrics (not meaningless as in they don't mean anything, but meaningless as in written to be a song and not written because they had personal meaning to the author(s)). However, it's far easier to find any niche music you like. You can sit at home and go through entire historical back catalogues. It doesn't seem like a good time for musicians. My take on that is that there was a period of time when some musicians were able to sell themselves due to changing technology and that coevolved with cultural changes. Now we're seeing a reversion to the mean where music isn't worth that much. If you write something new you're competing with everything written before and some of that is pretty good. Too many people are good at playing to make good at playing be a major selling point. I don't know how sad we should be about that. I'd prefer a world where it's common to play music at home than one where we just consume the music produced by a few bigshot artists.