I believe that music's role changed a lot first with the wide spread of the internet and then smartphones and streaming. The internet gave rise to a global cult

I believe that music's role changed a lot first with the wide spread of the internet and then smartphones and streaming. The internet gave rise to a global culture, and a new channel where culture can form, and then streaming completely changed how people consume music. I see rejection, disappointment and disillusion as a general theme that's going on in culture, but I can't say that these weren't present in the past cultures as well - going back some decades, the popularity of punk and its offshoots show just how much these feelings resonated with the audience back then. I think that with the widespread access and nonexistent barrier to entry to past cultures via streaming, attention just spread over the existing cultural palette, resulting in lower average consumption of the new and current. It's not that the new and current is rejected - it's rather that long tail is longer and taller.