Oh, that is annoying as all fuck because of the inbuilt smug assumption that popular music began with the Beatles, reached its apotheosis with Fleetwood Mac, and has all been downhill since Never Mind The Bollocks. The Beatles were 50 years ago, and there is no reason why they are obligatory listening today, any more than “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was compulsory for music fans in 1963. My parents were listening to The Spinners and The Clancy Brothers when I was growing up, but at least I was spared their insistence that it was the greatest music of all time and that I needed educating in it.
The thing is that so much great talent can be found outside of what’s getting played on the radio. I don’t even bother turning on the radio in my car, largely because I live in a small town and it’s inevitable that I’ll get in my car right at the start of a commercial break that ends about the time I arrive at my destination. The classic rock station plays the same stuff over and over and over and over… I like the music, but damn! Mix it up a bit! And the Top 40 station … I don’t like most of what gets airplay. But the Internet is rife with awesome stuff. I like anything, in any style, if it’s done well. Even back in the '80s when I was a metalhead (I spent most of my time blasting and playing guitar and bass along with Judas Priest and Iron Maiden), I had The Fixx’s “Reach the Beach” album and played the crap out of it. That was some good shit. Thomas Dolby was the shit.
There is so much good stuff on YouTube, and floating around elsewhere on the 'net. Ten-plus years ago I found a fantastic Japanese singer named “aiko” completely by accident. This was even before Napster - some guy had links to some aiko MP3s posted on his primitive website, and I completely fell in love with aiko and her music (I found where to buy her CDs, too. She deserved my money.)
You have to be willing to look outside your preferred genre. Look for excellence, whatever form it may take.
There is actually a lot of evidence that “pop” music has become less diverse and more homogenous. They actually measured this shit apparently. Here are a couple of pop songs:
Stereo Hearts - Gym Class Heroes feat Adam Levine from Maroon 5
Scream & Shout - Will.i.am feat Britney, bitch
Modern pop music is sort of a blend of hip&hop and rock vocals over a house music beat. There’s really not a lot of variation between the sound of Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Rihana, Beyoncé, Katy Perry or Pink. And some of the most popular acts are electronic music djs like David Guetta, deadmou5 or Swedish House Mafia. There music is really just beats with a female vocalist occasionally singing some chorus.
Which is not to say it’s all “crap”. A lot of it is really catchy. It’s scientifically designed to be that way. It’s just that it’s mostly homogenous and disposable. In a decade there won’t even be bands or djs. Just computer algorithms dropping beats and generating catchy hooks as ambient background noise.
I’m 37 and I host a radio show devoted to new music, mostly indie rock but whatever catches my fancy. So I have this conversation a lot.
Some relevant facts:
–You can’t overstate just how much more music there is now than there used to be. Someone pointed out last year that there was more music made and released in the first six months of 2012 than in the entirety of the 1960s. There’s no way to keep up with anything approaching everything out there, even if you just stick to the stuff that filters up.
–My high school years were 1990-1994. People my age like to remember it as the age of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, which a lot of us certainly listened to, but the biggest charting act of those years was Ace of Base.
I’m in my mid 50’s and love music. There doesn’t seem to be the number of heavy hitters equivalent today of what I experienced in the 60’s. I’m not going to try to list even a fraction of them but groups like the Beatles, Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix,The Who and The Rolling Stones were everywhere. they weren’t 1-hit wonders. They produced a great deal of music that was varied and creative.
It could be that I’m not exposed enough to today’s music to back that claim up. I prefer classic rock stations that mix in modern. I’ll hear and purchase stuff like Outsideby Staind.
I know there’s a lot of alternative music that I’m missing out on. I stumbled upon Michael Hedges years ago by accident when I belonged to a CD club and they sent me one of his CD’s. I expect a lot of that kind of talent floating around waiting to be discovered. I’m not referring to that. I’m talking about the heavy hitters that can deliver song after song over a span of years. There doesn’t seem to be the plethora of such bands anymore.
I’m 43, I have definitely enjoy finding new artists, but not necessarily popular new artists.
It is just so easy now to find new music. Last.Fm, Pandora, Spotify, eMusic, Bandcamp, even Amazon recommendations actually make it too easy. I’ve probably spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars due to Last.Fm alone.
Not only is easier to hear new music, it’s also easier to get the music once you’ve heard it (even legally). Many artists will make their music available on their website, often for free. Many also use the above mentioned Bandcamp to release their music, often for free or pay what you want.
One of my favorite new artists is Cloudkicker. He’s just some guy who produces his music on his Mac (it’s prog, not electronic), and then sells in on Bandcamp. He has reached a level where he can now release some on physical media, but I bought all of his stuff digitally.
As someone who grew up in the 70s and spent my teens in the 80s, one of the biggest things that the 90s really did was desegregate music, not just in terms of genre, but in fandoms. There were so many separate camps, with very little crossover: the metalheads, the ravers, the indie kids, the tail-end punks, the rap fans. They all guarded their territories so jealously, and liking one pretty much meant you had to dislike all the others.
And then, suddenly, in the aftermath of English rave and American grunge, and newer electronic acts like Portishead and Massive Attack, there was this genre called “alternative” which pretty much disregarded genres and threw everything up in the air. If it was good, it was in, and that included the bands of the past: you could cherry pick the bits that you liked, without needing to take on all the baggage. You were allowed to like everything.
It was like a breath of fresh air for music fans, but it was also the death-knell for the single-genre stadium bands: suddenly global rock bands were an anachronism or nostalgia acts, and their place was taken by a host of smaller, faster-moving acts which spanned a multitude of styles. And U2 pretended that they had liked electronics all along.
Sorry I had a busy week getting promoted in my job because I actually live a real life in addition to making arrangements to see 1D live (for the 4th time - this time front row) and also spending my vacation following Big Time Rush for 6 days through the midwest (VIP) in August.
You can mock all you want but who has more fun than me?
I sincerely did not intend to mock! 
I have vocally supported you in the past (in the pit I believe) where people were making fun of you for liking tween bands.
I’m nearly 27 myself and I enjoy One Direction quite a bit (at least their most popular stuff).
But yeah I mentioned you because I knew you’d fit the criteria of over 40 (I’m pretty sure I remember you being over 40 anyway, sorry if that’s not true), and likes some of today’s new music.
No offense intended, I promise!
i was in the pit and missed it?!
Hey, I won’t mock you! You’re having fun! Geeking out is good no matter what the topic of your geekery is. I’ve even been working on not mocking Twilight. It’s not easy, but I’m working on it. 
You’re a Justin Bieber fan, aren’t you? If you are and you ever talk to the boy, can you please tell him to pull his damn pants up and that he looks like an idiot with his tighty-whities flashing in the breeze like that? 
This has been my experience, too Combined with the proliferation of genre names. I’m boomer-aged. There used to be a handful of categories (R&B, Blues, Jazz, Classical, Pop). I was primarily a jazz fan.
As years passed I realized that what I really enjoyed was modern instrumental music (as opposed to Classical). One day I stumbled into a category of music that goes by a variety of labels (Chillout, Ambient, Downtempo, Shoegaze, …). I found that this was the “new” music I had been searching for and it’s where I spend the most time these days. My single favorite source for this kind of stuff is the Emjoy station on Live365.com.
As stated earlier, most of this has been around for years, but it took me awhile to discover it. So, it’s new to me.
So, nobody’s going to mock voguevixen? Really?
Fine, I’ll step up to the… oh, wait. Nevermind.
That James Otto chick?
Nobody is going to mention that the Eagles weren’t really anything special? The reason your dad liked them even though he was old is because they suck, and old people like music that sucks.
Seriously though, the sheer volume of music being made today forces musicians to push the envelope in all sorts of ways just to get noticed, more than ever before in history. Extremely talented musicians can end up as street performers today, because there’s just so many talented people there isn’t enough room for everyone to be famous. This means you’re not going to like most of it, since it’s all strange and weird and experimental. And yes, lots of it sucks, but the same is true for every generation.
Since he’s not here to defend himself, it falls to me: I’ll have you know that even my dad knew the Eagles sucked.
Despite just the beat or production values, there’s a lot of interesting lyrical content in some rap.
My favorite examples:
Lupe Fiasco -The Show Goes On and Words I Never Said
Immortal Technique - Dance with the Devil
Here’s one from about ten years ago but I’ve just recently fallen in love with because I actually listened to the lyrics:
Outkast - Hey Ya. At first it sounds like a generic pop song but it’s actually really friggin depressing.
When I see the word “artists” without any medium mentioned, I automatically think visual art rather than music or dance or performance art - I’m not sure why, and apparently the OP thinks music, but it was odd to see the headline “today’s new artists” and then the post exclusively music related.
I’m 46 and not very into music, but I hear some pieces of music I like that are new pretty often. I read webcomics and John Allison, the author of one of my favorite webcomics, has a yearly list of his favorite new music that he posts in his comic. The most recent list I went and listened to most of. There was one artist I liked a lot from it, Regina Spektor, and I listened to a bunch more of her songs. Many were fine, some were definitely not my thing. There’s also the occasional apparent phenomenon song that gets a lot of press like Gagnam Style, I found that one catchy. I do still like the music I liked back in my teens though, when I happen to hear that.
But uh, what about visual artists? I think there’s more good new art coming out every year from painters and tapestry makers. I really enjoy fabric art. Or perhaps that’s off topic, but the subject line… oh well 
55 here. Grew up with Santana, The Beatles, Grand Funk, Frank Zappa, Captain Beyond, Deep Purple, Yes, Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd, Allman Brothers Band, Mahavishnu Orchestra, etc ad infinitum. Here are a baker’s dozen that have engaged me in the last little bit. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student to classify them, if you think it’s important. (and still I managed to leave out anything by Derek Trucks. Wonder what that’s all about?)
Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere But Not Here
Transatlantic - We All Need Some Light
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - Hot Summer Night
Warren Haynes Band - River’s Gonna Rise
Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe - Elephants
Jimmy Herring - Within You Without You
Most white, middle class, insecure, self-hating dorks think they love the blues, but they actually don’t. They love the whole idea of authenticity and living vicariously through the trials and tribulations of some povety-stricken black man, but the music itself? Something they pretend to enjoy to impress other tryhards.