Why is modern pop music today so terrible?

"Pop" became a derogatory term in the late 60's, particularly amongst my counter-culture hippie contemporaries. I didn't let that stop me from listening to the "shiny", studio-produced sounds I still preferred to the overly-long (imo), extended solo blues-based ramblings of Cream, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Dead, etc. In the late 70's and 80's, my Punk and New Wave-listening contemporaries were bewildered by my love of ABBA and The Rubinoos. Their loss! Though looked down upon by my Country purist friends and associates, I even liked Shania Twain. Steve Earle called her "Nashville's highest paid lap dancer". A guilty pleasure, for sure!

A lot of pop is terrible, true, but not all of it.  Are there issues with sound quality?  Of course, but SQ and the music itself are two different things.  Now, if you include new music, not necessarily what is popular, there are many, many great new artists and bands.  Some of them even seem to produce their music with respectible, if not audiophile, quality.  In fact, there are so many excellent new artists in so many genres that I am finding it difficult to keep up.  I have a stack of notes on which I have scribbled the artist and song names of hundreds of great new music songs that I have heard on internet radio, and these cover many different genres.  So, while I value my record collection and still enjoy music that I've owned for 30 or 40 years, there is much more to discover and enjoy.  YMMV, of course.

Interesting...sort of...about the subject....
https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII

What you see depends upon where you are standing, or sitting .

Good post bondman!

I posted this to highlight the degradation of quality in what sells Today.

Music reflects the times it was recorded in.

There is still plenty of great sounding, good music now - however you have to seek it out! And it does not sell well.

In the past it was "out in the open"!