Today's music is created with the intent to sell, not influence. The songs today’s music industry classifies as latest hits are songs that lack quality, density, and abandon what it means to produce authentic and genuine music. Due to the unlimited access we now have to music as well as production through media, releasing music today requires a significantly lower degree of talent than ever before. This has a drastic effect on the music industry and what is considered popular today, and significantly influences how artists now approach releasing new music. 

Names like Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Elton John, and Bruce Springsteen turn heads and have consistently done so over time due to the lasting impression they’ve made on music, which is something that the majority of artists today frankly won’t accomplish. The vast majority of music that is released today is what I consider transient, and only remains popular for days or weeks at a time before we collectively dismiss it and move on. True music is able to withstand the test of time, these artists of the past have proven capable of doing so as new generations still appreciate the authenticity and quality of their music, something I highly doubt generations decades from now will be saying about the music being released today. 

Due to the overpowering technological aspects present in today's music, the quality of these songs has dropped significantly as almost every song is heavily influenced if not entirely made of computerized elements. Whereas in the past, the mastery of a musical instrument was largely what it meant to be a successful musician. Although there is still a significant degree of competitiveness in the music industry, anyone today is capable of uploading a song online and gaining recognition. However, throughout time recording and production costs meant the degree of talent needed to gain an audience and to be successful in the business was remarkably larger, making for higher quality music and artists. 

Various mainstream media platforms, most significantly TikTok, play a consequential role in why the quality of music has declined so dramatically over time. Not only does everyone on a global scale have the means to upload songs through these apps, but successful artists now must cater to what will become popular on these platforms. It is evident artists are releasing music solely to play into the popularity on apps like Tiktok, and the quality of their music is suffering because of it. Not only this, but a study conducted by the Spanish National Research Council in 2012 found by running modern pop songs through various algorithms that the tone quality and pitch of songs have declined drastically over time, meaning most pop music now sounds the same. 

Despite popularity, the quality of the music that is released and considered marketable today is undeniably on an entirely different level than in the past and artists can now get away with releasing extremely low-quality music while making a profit. These songs lack the individuality and creativity that once made or broke a song, and because of this, pop music as a whole is horribly repetitive and expected. The 80s produced some of the greatest music the world will ever know and those impressions are timeless despite the changes in the industry. Artists today simply are not going to achieve that status or leave a lasting impression on the future generations the same way that groups like The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones have, and the music industry will likely never produce artists to this caliber again.