Why does most new music suck?

All in perspective, grasshopper!

For some people, Zep, The Beatles, The Who, etc. are just examples of white folk butchering the music of Chuck Berry, et al. Then there are the folks that see Chuck Berry as an abomination of the blues. Etc. Etc.

I don't love hip hop, but I do see it as one more step in the evolution of the blues into dance music - pretty much the same way I see rock n roll.

Everyone sees art where they see it, misses art where they don't see it, and may or may not struggle to see it where it doesn't exist. At the end of the day, all you can do is keep looking. An open mind helps, but even that doesn't guarantee that anyone will relate to a given piece of music.

So, good luck and keep listening!

How many parents in the 1960s and 70s asked their teenagers why they listened to all that garbage? I clearly remember that my dad didn't think much of the Beatles and the other popular groups when I was a teen.

One also doesn't have to dig very deep to find that parents in decades before didn't think much of popular music for young people. In fact, the basic premise of the movie "The Benny Goodman Story" is "The legendary band leader fights to make swing acceptable" (a quote from the TCM channel web site).

In another example, I read that J.S. Bach was almost fired from his first job as a church organist. They thought his style of playing was distracting the congregation.

In spite of being an aging baby boomer, I spend very little listening time reliving the music of my youth. I'm about 1/3 classical and 1/3 jazz. When I do listen to rock or popular music, the odds are substantially in favor of more recent indy stuff. (I don't find much that appeals in mainstream pop, but that's my taste. I don't need others to agree with me.)

But, that's the nice thing about music -- there's plenty of variety so there's something for everyone.

My dad was very hip actually and even bought Led Zep. As well as the Beatles and Stones. He loved classical as well and he was only in his 30s at the time. I inherited his JBL C36s with the 030 speaker package.

There's probably more good--and bad--now than before simply because there's so much more being produced. There are so many more people around now and I'm betting a higher percentage are involved in making music. Homemade productions are huge in number due to the technology. How many self-produced projects were there in the 60's or 70's?
Not many.

Years from now the bad stuff will mostly have gone away and will be forgotten. The good stuff will be cherished and a later generation will get the wrong idea that this was a "golden age." I promise you, for all the good music produced in the 60's there was also a great deal of crap.
And, of course, it's all subjective anyway.

Every cycle has its share of good and bad art.

I did check out Radio Paradise for some different music and sampled the playlist via Amazon. I didn't really find an artist that could hold together an entire CD except for Ben Howard who I thought was exceptional....so still searching.