Was Old Music Actually Better, or Is That Just Nostalgia Talking?

You could argue taste is subjective — that this is just people getting stuck in the past, or explaining it away as melancholy.

But it’s not quite that simple.

Even the experts in the industry generally agree the music business genuinely got worse at some point after the 90s (I can’t pin the exact year). It used to be that if you had real musical talent, you made music. Today, if you have enough followers, you make music. Literally anyone — even someone who genuinely can’t sing — can become a “singer” now. Like in any industry, when unqualified people can get into positions through connections or hype rather than skill, the whole field starts to decline. That’s not a surprising outcome. It used to be unthinkable that a model would suddenly become a singer, people would scoff at the idea. Now Instagram influencers routinely try their hand at singing.

What I’m getting at is: once Auto-Tune was invented, all bets were off.