And in the 60’s, everyone listened to smarmy pop because that’s what got tons of play 
Not true. My son’s favorite bands are TV on the Radio and the Stones. My daughter loves Etta James. Lots of eclectic listeners out there.
I think this is a good point, NDP. Part of it, tho, is that the technology is now so affordable that there are more options (lots more) to being able to make music than a) actually playing an instrument (or singing well) and/or b) having the money to afford your own studio (because that is now the cost of a laptop, $100 worth of software and a $100 microphone).
Because I can tell you that IME kids who play guitar, bass and drums are forming bands in high school and college. The thing is, their technical skill is so far along and they want to push and exploit that, so they naturally gravitate towards metal. Someone with Tosin Abasi’s talent (Animals As Leaders, Reflux) isn’t going to want to spend his days playing simple pop tunes, they’re going to want to use the abilities they’ve spent years developing, and right now that leads to two places: jazz and metal.
TL; DR: Among kids who play instruments, rock music is alive and well in it’s various aspects, but especially in metal.
This.
And this.
I’m trying to figure out what the OP’s question really means. What do we mean by Rock N’ Roll?
In particular, is rock-based pop music included or excluded?
The rock of the 1960s was a totally different thing from jazz and big-band and the Sinatra-era stuff that my parents listened to. But when I listen to the stuff on the teenybopper stations these days, ISTM that it’s just as much rock-based pop as the bubblegum music of the late 1960s was. It may not be 1970s-80s arena rock, but it doesn’t seem to have sprung from a separate origin from the rock I grew up on 50 years ago.
Rock may be watered down, but AFAICT nothing’s come along to shove it aside and replace it, the way rock shoved jazz etc. aside.
That’s why I mentioned Oasis and Coldplay. It certainly isn’t the rock I grew up loving.
But, it’s got a rock beat and some of their stuff is decent. I’ll leave the radio for Coldplay. Sure, I much rather hear Bob Seger. Sadly he’s not on the radio much anymore.
Not a ringing endorsement. It’s all we got right now.
Seger just cancelled his tour and had surgery. Thankfully he’s doing ok. His new album comes out in a few weeks.
I don’t think things are going to end in a “bang” musically, with a sea change. We don’t have enough cultural capital or consensus to make it happen. I hear so much whimpering though. Music will be weakened by being atomized into genres.
Depends on how you define the “Rock Era.” Some old rock is still popular. There is some new rock, but you’ll probably only find it on your FM dial on a station that identifies as “alternative.” The Rock Era is not dead, but not exactly thriving.
There was a thread not so long ago here asking if there was any new metal. I think the answer was basically no.
Rock music got a bit of a rejuvenation in the 2000’s when ‘Guitar Hero’ and then ‘Rock Band’ came out. We go to a fair number of concerts, and I noticed that the percentage of young people showing up at classic rock concerts started to go way back up around this time. Some old rock acts who got songs in the game began touring again, and filled halls they hadn’t been able to fill for years.
Alas, that fad seems to have faded as well. Rock Band is still around, but I don’t think it has the kind of influence it had a decade ago.
For what it’s worth, my college aged son says that classic rock is alive and well, and almost all his friends listen to it (along with new music).
The last Supertramp concert here sold out a 17,000 seat arena, just a few years ago. ZZ Top filled a large concert venue a couple of years back. Heck, Lynyrd Skynyrd is still selling out stadium gigs.
So Rock isn’t dead, but I would agree that the ‘Rock era’ probably died in the 1990’s. If we need an event to hang its death on, I would say the breakup of Guns ‘n Roses might be a good candidate.
When it started, there was just rock and roll. And R and B. And some Soul. Then there was the British Invasion. Then there was Glam, Progressive, Country, Acid, Punk, Grunge, Hard, Metal, Industrial, Death and a hundred fucking other things. All of which took a back seat to rap and hip-hop, and trip-hop… And of course there’s still Jazz (smooth, Dixieland, fusion, Latin and a hundred fucking other things) and Classical (don’t even get me started).
Long and short of it is that back in the 50s and 60s, there wasn’t much in the way of choices in styles of popular music. Now we have more choices that we can shake a stick at. All are still valid art forms, just some are more popular than others.
As to when rock stopped being the dominant form, I think the end started here:
I would say hip hop and derived music forms. To me, there were three main musical revolutions in popular music in America in the 20th century: jazz, rock, and hip hop.
Definitely hip-hop. I was just thinking yesterday about how I can’t think of any rock or pop bands doing any sort of social commentary. Seems like that kind of ended with Rage Against the Machine. Hip hop has always had social commentary but it’s definitely ramping up more in the past decade than when it was new. I look at some hip hop albums and half the tracks are still the classic “I’m the shit!” and half are “here’s what’s going on in the world.” Granted, I’m buying a lot more hip-hop than rock these days but rock is still singing about girls and boys while hip-hop is giving me stuff to think about.
I’m 49 and I’ve been discovering a lot of hip-hop over the past couple of years. It’s fucking great. I’d far rather listen to Madvillainy than some rawk shit which is popular only because it sounds like stuff that’s already been on the radio. That, as Lester Bangs said, isn’t music, it’s air freshener.
I’d say the only period when rock* was more popular than pop* was the decade from 1965** (“Ticket to Ride,” the Beatles first “heavy” single) to 1975 **(Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin’s last great album). See our fascinating “Top 40, year by year” series of threads, from about two years ago, if you need some hard data.
That’s a different issue than the opinion that the typical pop song today is crappier (more generic, less creative) than the typical pop song of decades past. I’d say that’s true. Think of a typical 60s pop band (The Association…), or 70s one (Supertramp…), or 80s one (Duran Duran…), and their hits are simply more interesting songs than typical pop today (though sometimes interesting pop songs do still arise). It may be the latest phase in the process that linguist John McWhorter described in his 2003 book Doing Your Own Thing – the change from composed popular music as music, to performed popular music as a quasi-musical expression of oral speech.
(*Obviously these categories are fuzzy, but you know what I mean.)
(**Or, if you prefer, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to the Fall of Saigon).
Fascinating.
It’s just ended. Fats Domino is dead.
Right on.
Here’s an interesting article from Vox about Indie Rock’s decline in relevance from its peak in 1997. Not to toot my horn but what I said about how the internet and Napster were responsible for rock’s decline back at Post #20 is confirmed.
When I go into a store and hear 1980s rock and pop as background music, I wonder what younger people think hearing that. Does music from 30 years in the past sound as old-timey to them as crooners, big bands, 1001 strings beautiful music, and schmaltzy 1950s-era pop seemed to me when I was their age?
A lot of stores seem to play a short loop of what I call empowerment pop – “I am the eye of the tiger baby gotta be strong gotta be touch gotta be wiser you’re beautiful just the way you are you don’t have to change a thing the world could change its heart and you’re gonna hear me roar”
In what ways is Pop music not rock?
It’s got that emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beats of the measure, and everything.
I don’t think rock is dead. It’s deader than dead.
Cite: - YouTube
And if rock is truly dead, is it six feet deep?
Cite: Marilyn Manson - Deep Six (Explicit) (Official Music Video) - YouTube