The main problem with the writer's analysis is that she confuses two separate matters: the quality of music, and the industry's ability to market that music.

Regarding the first, I simply don't believe that music is drastically better or worse at any given point in time. There is always good-to-great music being made. I've been listening closely for 35 years and there is plenty of music I love from every era. In programming my radio shows from the '70s to today, my problem has NEVER been a lack of super new music, it's finding time to play it all.

People typically favor music from their teens and young adulthood - a time when they are on the cutting cultural edge and have time and energy to devote to such things as popular culture before children, career, home, and life edge popular culture out of the way. That's why classic rock, oldies, and "music of your life" radio are all so popular with their respective generational target audiences.

So I'm a freak in that I've maintained my relationship with popular culture into my 40's, although my kind isn't nearly as unusual as it used to be with the aging of the Baby Boomers.

As a result, I don't believe the quality of music is the problem: it's that the majors don't know how to nurture that talent along and build careers rather than simply hits. Part of this is the change in the corporate personality of the labels, now basically run quarter-to-quarter by accountants and finance people, not record people; another part is marketing and knowing how to sell quality rather than the fad of the moment.

The article correctly points out all of the latter but doesn't differentiate between knowing what to do with talent - which is a big problem - and the existence of talent, which is not.