[ArekDymalski]

While I agree that modern tools have some detrimental effect on the quality of music* (mainly the loss of character/feeling /"soul" because it's much harder to be expressive like a live musician when all you have is a sequencer and some synths or samples), I think there's other reason of dumbing down of pop.

When we are talking about Pop charts hits, we are talking about songs quite often made by a small set of producers. The job title of these guys is strikingly adequate. They are manufacturing a product according to the specific requirements of the record labels+radio stations ecosystem. That's why the result is so often generic - it's a result of using some formulas which are proven to work for decades.

*On the other hand the "modern" tools created so many new amazing genres and styles that the net result might be not detrimental at all :)