Why is modern pop music today so terrible?

One word... Cornpression :/

...and everything else should be OK if compression is removed.

@goose ,

in the nut-shell it doesn't exist, but outside of it there's lots of ways to find great today's music around the world -- all you need to do is turn off radio and teevee and start lookin' for tunes that are good. there's still Berkeley and Cambridge schools of music around and those are super GOOD.

Pop music today merely reflects the lack of substance in modern society.  There are really no, or very few, positive influences today to spawn thoughtful, meaningful music.  I know I heard the same from my parents when I listened to the Beatles and Dylan.  I know my children will look at my musical tastes in the same way.  I don't see it getting better.  So I listen to my 10,000 odd tracks on my server, set to random, and revel in my 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's music.  The 2000's have some presence, but pale in comparison.  Old Farts rule! 

It's creatively exhausted.  Pop music today has the same problem "classical" music faced at the end of the 19th century: there's a very finite number of chords and chord progressions that sound "right" to the human ear, and we've used them up.

If that's OTT, think about pop music post-Elvis and pre-Beatles; there was a ton of Brill Building dreck out there.