[svantana]

This is it. Music production technology made incredible strides from 1960-1990, as well as new ideas around production that the new equipment enabled. Thus, in that period, pop music sounded "old" very quickly. This all culminated with a computer-driven "we can do anything" style in the late 90's, where people like BT made awful hi-tech productions. Now, with hindsight, we see that 40-year old albums like Thriller still sound amazing, there simply is no new tech that can improve it.

[ghaff]

While I personally don't much care for much new music I hear, I'm hesitant to chalk it up to music being worse rather than I'm somewhat set in my preferences. That said, pre-COVID I had definitely reached the point where I had never heard of the bands playing trade show parties and the like and, when I did hear them, my impression was somewhere between meh and it's noise.

[svantana]

Hold up, I certainly didn't mean to imply that music has gotten worse - only that it stopped getting better (from a purely sonic perspective). There's lots of great new music coming out, but a lot of it has a retro sound anyway.