There's tons of great indie music out there atm, but the radio 'mainstream' has turned to trash.
But it was probably always like this. Old man yells at cloud etc.
But even just looking at the current charts for this week, Brat by Charli XCX, Romance by Fontaines DC and Woof by Fat Dog are all fantastic albums. Surprisingly, David Gilmour has a new album that’s at #1.
That nitpick aside, while Rick Beato's extremely Boomer, he's vaguely grasping at actual problems. My take on it is that streaming platforms are built to do what the labels want them to do - sell music as a commodity. In the terrestrial radio era, labels would pay radio stations to put specific songs they wanted to push in heavy rotation. This is called payola[0]. It's illegal, but everyone did it anyway.
[0] The term was coined in an era where anything to do with music ended in "ola". Victrola was a brand of record player, Motorola was a brand of car radio, etc.
I "know" it through my parents. Although I don't know how much radio time they logged. They heard big bands live, for dancing.
I could be wrong, but I have the impression that radio stations would have "programs" of music, along with news and entertainment. It wouldn't be music all the time. There weren't portable radios, either -- you'd gather around the radio set.
Must have been good times.