That's focusing too much on one data point, the popular "teen idol" singers of the day. :)
Overall we have far more ability to chose the music that fits you personally. If some people chose Bieber, that's fine. I happen to not chose Bieber, and there's plenty of ways of creating playlists on Spotify / listen to the Pandora stations I like / surf Youtube videos / etc. where I never have to hear a Bieber.
In Frank Sinatra's day, you were limited to live performances, kind of lousy sounding radio transmissions, and kind of lousy sounding 78s. Even modern compressed music sounds better than that and there's plenty of music options in full fidelity.
There's even people picking up the crooner torch these days. Some of them have a pretty decent career doing it (I'm thinking of the Michael Bubles and Harry Connick Jrs of the world). And if you want to listen to Frank, it's easy to very quickly do that too.
The part I see arguing with more justification is that it's probably worse for many musicians overall. Music never has been a great path to wealth (unless you are lucky to become a superstar) but my impression is that a lot of the jobs "in the middle" (your local cover bands and recording studios and whatnot) are either suffering from the same wage stagnation affecting other jobs in the middle, or are gone altogether due to technological advances.
Overall we have far more ability to chose the music that fits you personally. If some people chose Bieber, that's fine. I happen to not chose Bieber, and there's plenty of ways of creating playlists on Spotify / listen to the Pandora stations I like / surf Youtube videos / etc. where I never have to hear a Bieber.
In Frank Sinatra's day, you were limited to live performances, kind of lousy sounding radio transmissions, and kind of lousy sounding 78s. Even modern compressed music sounds better than that and there's plenty of music options in full fidelity.
There's even people picking up the crooner torch these days. Some of them have a pretty decent career doing it (I'm thinking of the Michael Bubles and Harry Connick Jrs of the world). And if you want to listen to Frank, it's easy to very quickly do that too.
For the consumers, today is probably worse only in the fact that many people don't like too much choice (http://www.economist.com/node/17723028).
The part I see arguing with more justification is that it's probably worse for many musicians overall. Music never has been a great path to wealth (unless you are lucky to become a superstar) but my impression is that a lot of the jobs "in the middle" (your local cover bands and recording studios and whatnot) are either suffering from the same wage stagnation affecting other jobs in the middle, or are gone altogether due to technological advances.