I'm not talking about the existence of individual anecdotes, I'm talking broadly as a culture because this is a comment section for a blog post about culture. I was an adult working in the music industry in the 1990s.

By and large if you were part of the indie music scene it was incredibly common to consider anything in mainstream commercial music "not cool." Boy bands were reviled for it, and people felt strongly about it.

From a cultural standpoint much of this sentiment has been lost entirely. This is part of the change the author is talking about.