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it's worse than that. snotty nosed kids that don't understand melody, song writing or true poetry, let alone how to use the gear that makes music give their opinions as facts. devolution, indeed....

I loved it when Lucky Man by ELP was high on the charts, and Billboard asked Keith Emerson how he felt about his success.
He exclaimed having a hit record is a Sin.......
ELP's B Side songs were always the best, and I saw ELP 3 times. The first time in '72 I was a meger pre teen, but was totally mesmorized. Second time I was impressed at Keith, but Palmers timing was terrible, then the 3rd time at Sacramento State Fair Emerson had nerve damage but was still man enough to play, but OMG I was so sad and depressed to see my former idols in such bad shape.
I still think the best band that lasted decades and always kicked major ass w/o silly sequencers was the Allman Brothers.
Greg Allman back in the day was actually wlaked out to his B3 and seated, and so high that managers were nervous about cancelling etc. But no matter how much Jackie D. he drank, how much he snorted, how many pills, etc.
The sound of the sticks counting off turned him into a monster singer/performer.
I still have never seen a human who could abuse himself so much and still perform as is nothing was wrong.....

I agree though, these pop music stars bore me to tears, but I do like the guy who does GaGa's stuff sometimes.
All ITB using Logic. Pretty impressive.

a hit is great!

It's sort of a skewed measure though.. For a proper comparison they'd have to control for new distribution methods, consumer's ability to consume (more playback devices available now), dispensable income, etc.. The sales itself or ranking, or whatever they used for the comparison can't be used directly. (I'm director of analytics at my company)

From a business perspective though I think it's commendable that "hit production" has become somewhat of a science. Whatever it is that comes out of the pipeline, the business itself is more optimized than ever. But they need to be to stay alive in piracy world.

From an music anthropology perspective, we can compare the amount of effect a particular artist or class of artists have in the course of evolution for industrial music. In that sense, it's debatable that older artists had more effect and current have less. Single artists (or rather, his production team) still have the ability to change the market's "sound" and trend. Whether those trends make musical sense or not is of course, a different topic.

Musically of course there is a decline. Even without nostalgia and "grumpy old man" syndrome, it can be objectively said that current music makes a lot less musical sense (theory wise) than what was lauded as great music during times before. Though to their credit, club music is a thing of its own since their evolution is largely dictated by the club playback environment where melody and harmony is easily trumped by articulate percussion. It's also strange that the club sound is a strong trend even though only metropolitan areas have them.

On BEP, I don't think they should be bundled with brainless production idols.. I don't listen to them on a regular basis, but their stuff is actually musically very diverse and either William or whoever his ghost writer is, does musically significant things. (they actually have creatively arranged chord progressions from time to time)