Is Old Music Killing New Music?

"There is a composer/conductor named Steve Hackman who is taking new music like Rap, Radiohead, Coldplay, and others and mixing it with the classics to form new hybrid versions of the older classic standards that might appeal to a wider modern audience. So using newer music to freshen up the old."

More like using old music to prop up the new.

I am sorry. There is lots of good music being produced these days, but it pales in comparison to the vast catalogue of every conceivable music genre produced in the 60's, 70's and 80's.  There is also a complete lack of musicianship in modern music that drives me crazy. I may be simplifying things, but back in the day musicians got in to music to make music and to produce their own unique sound. These days there are far too many that make music to become rich and famous and have no problem copying whatever music is making money.

That's my old fart rant for today.

If you listen to youtube you'll find covers by 20 and 30 years olds of Blind Faith, Beatles, etc.  Dark Side of the Moon was on the charts for 491 weeks.  Cat Stevens came out of hibernation and issued a current version of a classic half a century old album.  

Think any current group will break the record of Dark Side?  How much current music will be around in half a century?

"keeping the airwaves to themselves". My posterior.

Think any current group will break the record of Dark Side?  How much current music will be around in half a century?

Very good point. One of the very few bands that has people successfully playing their music. Aussie Pink Floyd and Brit Pink Floyd are selling out shows. 

How much current music will be around in half a century?

@berner99  define "current music"...?

I find that a lot of young people are pretty genre agnostic. Back when I was a youngster--which was the prime demographic for buying records after the "youth explosion" in the later '60s (when record companies got on board after Monterrey Pop '67), there was much siloing and rigidity among my peers about "what was cool" and who to listen to. Today, I don't think it is strange for someone in their teens to shift from soul to heavy early psych to whatever. 

I do think having Big Data as the gateway does change things in terms of curation. But, the reality as I knew it was, with rare exceptions, the stuff that the record companies pushed and marketed might sell for a while at the expense of other, now forgotten artists on their roster. Now, a fair number of these lesser known artists from the day can be accessed via the Internet (lesser in the sense of commercial impact, not necessarily artistry). Some of that stuff is old but it is good. 

My experience as an audiophile also changed my listening habits and not always for the better- looking for sonic spectaculars rather than musically interesting or challenging stuff. And there was a similar "peer" influenced -"oh, you have to get this."  Once I dropped out of the audiophile approved stuff, I started to have fun, and that's where the real learning began.

That's why, for me, I'm constantly challenging myself to find new to me, different music of a lot of different types. The genre and marketing classifications often don't hold up-- yeah, there is a difference between classical and rap, but in the pop/jazz/blues/rock arena, there's a lot of good stuff, along with psych folk and variations on all of the above. I mentioned a relatively new artist to @Tomic601 the other day-- Lady Blackbird, who isn't just channeling Nina Simone, but creating a blend of a lot of jazz, psych and blues that is well arranged, performed and produced. 

Despite the availability of streaming services as a source for finding music, I still think the onus is on us to seek out and find "new to us" music, whether recently made or dug out from the vast archive of the past. In my case, a lot of those "finds" are older--is it because of my age and interest? Probably. My limited experience with Qobuz was that their catalog of deep groove jazz from the '70s is pretty shallow. I suspect other streaming services are similar.