Why Has There Been Such a Decline in the Quality of Popular Music?

As Napster and later iTunes (and MySpace!) facilitated rapid discovery of long-tail music selection, both music producers AND consumers arranged themselves in much smaller niches. So, indie rock fans no longer listen to mainstream rock radio to discover new music; they don’t even need to interact with the greater indie music community. They can just read Pitchfork and have extremely relevant content pushed to them directly. As a consequence of this microtargeting, the remaining mainstream music outlets (MTV, pop radio, etc.) have had to move even further to the center, since any even slightly fringe interest is better served by more personalized content sources. This is why variety on the radio has decreased and our biggest musical institution, American Idol, caters to middle-aged Middle-Americans. The only way they can compete with personalized sources of music is by casting the widest net possible.