I feel bad for Generation X and The Millennial's

I'm a millennial, and honestly there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. My friends and I listen heavily to records from the 60s to the 80s. I remember a lot of cool music growing up in the 90s, and post 2000 you really have to look hard for excellent music. But it still exists.

The difference is that while record companies probably aren't going to own an artist's soul in perpetuity anymore, the economics of music, particularly recorded music are such that few can make it a career. Artist development is not that much of a thing anymore, production budgets are tiny, audio quality is also in a pretty bad state with so many records relying on plugins. I feel more optimistic about electronic artists who can exist exclusively in the digital realm, and that is honestly where most new music that interests me comes from now. Bands tend to be so heavy fried in distortion that I just can't get into the recordings.

People will always defend their turf and get sensitive about generational stuff. I honestly think a lot of it is cope. The reality is that we don't produce true classics like we used to because we don't invest in artists or recordings. I think it also comes with the general decay of culture that happens as commodification and capital eat up everything leaving empty husks. I also wonder as younger people are less likely to own homes, or live in them, that also makes rehearsal a lot more difficult and you might as well become a DJ. This stuff comes in cycles, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of great musicians come from Asia where culture and the economy isn't in such decline.

So yeah, I think you are right that we missed out, but it's always a mixed bag and some things are better now. Boomers had the post-war golden age age where the economy was growing at an enormous pace, a social safety net still existed, homes and education were affordable, and then you had an influx of new drugs etc that made for some inspiration. Our future pretty much sucks, and without that confidence and economic support it is hard to get far in music. But there will always be creative people doing something interesting, and once in a while you get a true genius.

It makes sense that older folks would have a deep sentimentality towards the influences of their own generation. I suppose it’s human nature to make comparisons based on subjective familiarity. However when I look at Giacometti painting it would seem odd to believe it unenlightened just because it belonged to a period where practices differed from the age of Bernini or Donatello. Yes, music is a vastly different discipline and so this may seem like an apple to oranges comparison however I could say the same thing about Steve Reich and Monteverdi. So in this light, it really isn’t as much about music as it is about popular culture. I was born in 1962 so I am at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation but I listen to very little music from my generation. I like Sly and the Family Stone, Grateful Dead, etc… but that in itself is extremely limited by comparison to the amount of art music written throughout the centuries. So if I am feeling deprived, than it’s really of my own making. 

Gen Xer here, I saw Pink Floyd in LA in the late 70s, David Bowie in Edmonton in the mid 80s, Beck in Geneva in the late 90s, and The Killers in Vegas in the late 2000s, however since then it's been hard to understand/appreciate and thus connect with hip-hop and rap, probably it's mostly me getting old and narrow minded - but then again the Brian Eno/Robert Fripp-inspired band Stars of the Lid from the 2000s sent me down the rabbit hole of 'eclectic' electronica/ambient "New Music". Every year lots of this stuff is produced but never finds a wide audience, nevertheless a LOT of it is fascinating and deeply immersive. My 21 year old daughter listens to Drake on her crappy Beats headphones etcetera and knows nothing about this genre, although kids her age are producing it. It does indeed seem the music scene has been atomized and siloed like so much else has via social media technologies. OTOH when I play her well-recorded "classic" Art Pepper-style jazz on my $$$$ hifi rig she is mesmerized and wants to share that with me, but is of course reluctant to risk sharing that newfound interest with her friends, so there is maybe something to the argument that new technologies and their subsequent market forces have decimated the incentives for music artists or even artists in general, and this has led to a dearth of quality artists/music/recordings.

@kairosman New technologies have given us life like recordings. DSD 128 is jaw dropping. Listening to music live has and will always be my first choice but my inability to travel as I once did makes it so that I’m dependent on audio playback. We are in a digital Renaissance and I have no regrets.

So sad, they never got to see Lawrence Welk while eating Swanson’s tv dinner with mom and dad.