Is Old Music Killing New Music?
I just read the clip, and it seems to conflate "popular music" with "new music" and while they probably overlap to some extent, they are certainly not equivalent.
Agree - he seems to be talking less about whether there's any good or meaningful new music and talking more about the reduction of the role of new music in popular culture, whereas he sees older songs retaining that role, even with a younger audience.
I think a lot of ^^^^ has to do with the total decentralization and atomization of new music over the last 25 years - coextensive with the age of digital production and distribution. When analog record labels and the radio airplay industry controlled, the scope of new music was much narrower. People listened to largely the same thing depending on which radio format they listened to. This wasn't necessarily bad, there was good music made - but when people are sharing the same experiences it creates lasting cultural bonds that becomes a sort of cultural currency that seems to easily translate to new people even though they were there at the time.
Now, there's just so much music. The technological (and hardware) hurdles to recording music have been obliterated and distribution is now as simple as uploading to a platform. New music is everywhere, all the time. In great quantities and across all genres including new ones that didn't really exist before the digital/internet era apart form some very minor recordings with virtually no distribution.
I love old music, have a pretty extensive knowledge of it (by sort of studying it over the years) and a love for 60s, 70s, and 80s rock and pop was a huge part of how my wife and I bonded so closely - and she listens to old stuff exclusively. But I love new music, I seek it out, I find that I can thrive on it in a way that the old stuff just doesn't deliver. And in fact there is some brain physiology behind that (see link below).
The key is to find sources of new music that suit your tastes. I think the most efficient way to do that is find a publication/website that reviews new music that slants toward your taste, whatever that taste is, there's a music website covering it. Let the professionals do the hard work for you, read weekly reviews of new releases and the ones that sound like they're up your alley, give it a listen. My taste in new music is very indie rock and Americana, I read Pitchfork and Consequence of Sound reviews regularly to find new stuff - but there are so many other avenues.
Of course this is all beside the point of the piece in the OP. To answer the question it raises, I personally don't think that old music is what is keeping new music from reaching the same cultural status as music from past decades. I think it's the nature of how music is made, distributed, and consumed these days that accounts for that - they're apples and oranges. It's not a level playing field.
https://www.rewire.org/listen-new-music/
https://www.nme.com/news/music/various-artists-2072-1252300
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/en...-music-psychology_uk_5fff21bac5b65671988b22e9