I agree with Russ. Music and musicianship is as strong as ever. The problem has come from, oddly enough, the democratization of production and distribution, IMHO.

Professional popular music, back before Napster started the slide, was a heavily curated art form. It cost big bucks to get recorded, it cost big bucks to get promoted, it cost big bucks to get distributed. The other side of the coin (literally!) was the big bucks you could make (or the record company could, anyway!) because EVERYBODY paid for your music. The hard part was getting past the gatekeepers. A&R men ruled, talent was very carefully decided upon, and you never even saw the inside of a studio unless you had been vetted by several upper echelon bigwigs in the record company.

Yes, this MIGHT have made a few really talented musicians miss the boat, probably not as many as you might think, but what it did exceptionally well was to keep out the untalented, the semi-talented, the wannabes....

Nowadays, Napster and the Internet, Youtube, Soundcloud and all the streaming distribution avenues has made those gatekeepers moot. Music is cheap to produce, cheap to promote, cheap to distribute. And all but the very lucky, tiny few make next to nothing for their efforts. But, of course, everybody dreams, right?!

The problem nowadays is finding that needle in the haystack. The old system made sure there was no haystack. If it made it to vinyl, it had at least passed basic muster. So finding the talent was a search through, OK, let's just call it a MUCH smaller haystack! Not so today. Every hack can garner as much exposure as the most talented.

You can't really blame the kids nowadays for getting distracted. We never had to face that viral onslaught, we got spoonfed the best stuff right from the cradle. Who knows where popular music might have gone if the 60's and the 70's didn't have the music machine to promote the best. Might we have missed the Beatles in the throng of dozens of skiffle bands from Liverpool? Might we have missed Crosby Stills Nash and Young if every single California folk band had the exact same coverage?

The musicians are out there, but you have to spend a VERY long and quite horrible time sifting through the rejects who would never have got to see the inside of a studio back in the day to find them! But for every CardiB there's a Jacob Collier...