Music is interesting to me, because I've experienced the opposite.
What I've encountered is if you get outside the top 100, a lot of like TikTok and SoundCloud famous people are actually doing some really interesting music. Things that play with the sound in ways you would never hear on the radio.
I feel like music is the one area where I still genuinely find interesting modern stuff regularly.
I agree. I feel there is not a time in history where such a huge diversity of music was produced.
I couldn't agree more. I think what has happened is that everything has become so fragmented due to the sheer volume of content being created that discovery is still a challenge. If you are someone who thinks that music, movies, novels, etc are in decline, then frankly you're just not looking hard enough.
For music, I'd recommend looking at Bandcamp Daily[0]. It's not all my cup of tea, but there are some amazing new artists out there spanning nearly every genre imaginable.
[0] https://daily.bandcamp.com/