I guess it depends on the taste. For me some genres are fine, but pop music is ass
You know how people with perfect pitch are driven crazy by things normal people can’t hear? What if most people sub-sub- consciencely hear auto-tune and reject it without even realizing why? Or hear super complex parts that are obviously a programmed synth. They may like the music, but it just doesn’t affect them on any kind of emotional level like it would if it was all real.
The 80s are rich in programmed synth parts. For that matter, 70s-era disco basslines (e.g. “I Feel Love”) or even some iconic 80s drum fills (“In the Air”) are programmed.
I honestly don’t know if music today is better or worse than music of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, etc. Mostly because I no longer have uninterrupted and privileged free time to explore music the way I did back when my parents provided everything my spoiled youth needed. I can’t imagine spending hours exploring the vast amount of music available now. I’m sure good music does exist, but I don’t have the time to sift through hundreds of possibilities to find it. Plus, I have acquired new interests apart from music that also take time. Many of them are far more interesting than music fads.
As an adult, music also doesn’t feel as important to me as it once did. It’s mostly entertainment, after all. It’s not going to change the world, solve any real problems, or make any of us into better people. It’s mostly just fun. Even music that’s considered “timeless” and “important” by the music media is mostly just fun. And it’s okay that it’s mostly just fun. Don’t pretend it’s something that it’s not. It’s an industry, it’s always been an industry trying to sell product. It’s not too far from lifestyle marketing.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter if music is better or worse now than before, or vice versa. It’s mostly a meaningless question bathed in subjectivity. No one knows, and no one can know, whether music is “better” now or before, either. It’s not a fact-based or evidence-based inquiry that involves “proof.” In the end, no one knows and it really doesn’t matter. All that remain are preferences.
Come now! Every generation believes that their music was the last great music. LOL
That may be the case for you and many other people, and that’s ok, but note that for some people, including me, music is the most important thing in life. People like us would wither and die without it, that’s why I still check out and find good new music today.
WI it did get irrecovably worse at some point? Would anybody notice? Would anybody really care? Could any valid criticism be raised which wouldn’t be immediately rebutted with a picture of Abe Simpson waving his fist angrily at a cloud?
Probably not. I’m not sure any criticism can be ‘vaild’ in that sense - it boils down to “this is a subjective opinion about a matter of subjective taste but my opinion is less subjective than yours!” That doesn’t make sense. Also, there are quotes from thousands of years ago complaining about the youth and how things were better in the old days.
The OP is no longer around but the subject can be summarized as “how to reveal my age without revealing my age”
This is interesting because, if true, it is open ended because there are always “older days” than what we think of as being the “old days”, so that means, the farther back you go, things were better. That being said, things were perfect just before the Big Bang and have been going downhill ever since! 
I mean, I’m a “moral relativist” when it comes to this, so I think, no. I grew up within a certain set of musical expecations and lived through them, so that became my standard for what music should be. My children are growing up in a different time and with a different, and much broader to be honest, set of expectations so have a different perspective on what makes good music. It’s a boring truth, but it’s all subjective. Except for the fact that 1974 was the worst year for pop music. That’s an objective reality.
Hey, that was the year ABBA won the ESC with “Waterloo”! OTOH, it was also the year Terry Jacks’ “Seasons In The Sun” was a hit, so I’m torn.
Though the most famous one was fabricated in 1907:
I think there’s something to the idea that popular music isn’t as musically sophisticated, skillful, or have enduring iconic power as other eras. Just sampling what was on commercial radios then vs, now, there’s really no contest. As far as the musical patterning, chord progressions, bridges, harmonies that pop stars were doing in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, all of that started to die out in the 90’s in favor of rap, grunge, and mass-produced dance music. Most pop music is fairly formulaic and predictable now. There are some good performers, but most of their artistic sophistication is in cultural reference and styling.
Now, if you turn your radio dial to the left (this was an analog device that tuned the frequency of the receiver to the desired broadcast frequency), you’ll land on college and noncommercial stations that are actually doing more interesting and sophisticated stuff than at any given time in the past.
There are limits to this of course. Some of it is fun low-fi garage stuff. They’re not inventing jazz, because that’s been done and can only be done once. There’ll only be one Prince. But the kids are still doing amazing stuff out there, make no mistake about it. There is good music being made out there every day, it’s just that it mostly doesn’t end up becoming popular or viral.
You can make a case for a number of years. 1974 is a kinda meme year for this. 1990 is also mentioned. 1975. 2005. 2017. But those mid 70s did have quite a lot of schlock.But this is Top 40. There’s always something interesting going on somewhere.
But is there really?
As mentioned earlier in the thread, we only remember the stuff that survived, i.e. the ‘good’ stuff. Even things that are ‘popular’ or ‘viral’ now are often barely remembered a few years later. It’s only a tiny fraction that will have any significant staying power into the generations. And that’s as it ever was. We don’t know about the total crap from other eras because they only survive in the back rooms of random archives.
So, is it that there is actually something different or are we merely re-discovering some combination of detection and recency bias?
I know this is all a bit in jest, but at least one of my all time favorite albums came out in 1974, “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” by Richard and Linda Thompson. But you can’t really call that pop.
I’ve seen it suggested that the entire 1850s was this for classical music (opera aside).
Also Eno’s “Here Come the Warm Jets” for me.
I think that as we age, people start to fall into two broad categories. Those that regard music as an essential part of heir daily life and who seek to replicate that feeling they get when discovering new music that resonates. Those who enjoy music as something that fills the gaps in the day, but is more of a background comfort than anything else and don’t feel that need to spend energy on discovery.
Which camp am I in? Here’s a quote that sticks with me, from a sixteen year old musician:
The notion that pop music wasn’t also fairly formulaic and predictable back then (for whatever ‘back then’ you prefer) is ridiculous.