Sure, there's plenty of generic, uninspired pop and rock. But there's plenty of generic, uninspired classic musical as well. And dig even a little deeper, and you find many, many pop rock, and hip-hop artists who are wildly experimental, yet still find an audience. Techniques like sampling and the use of electronics were pioneered by the avant-garde, but it is pop, rock and hip-hop artists who have taken them further and done the hard work of figuring out how they can be incorporated into a traditional (and new) melodic frameworks that actually have an appeal to the listener.
For example this one, to the 12-note piece mentioned towards the start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sylplEFxXo and the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8K9gkuHpMo
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/how-to-fall-in-love-with-modern-c...
That led me to wonder if there should be more cross pollination between the two.
When speaking of, and indeed when many modern electronic music composers write music they don't think in terms of phrases, chords, cadences, etc. The tools they use to write music don't have notes on a staff, they are just rectangles in a graph (1 axis for pitch and the other for time).
But at the same time, those who compose in the more traditional sense only stick to the sounds, patterns, and vocabulary from the classical world. They don't do anything like "drops".
It would be really interesting to hear what could come from the combination of the two and also the productivity that could be gained by both worlds learning about the concepts and tools used by the other.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Music-Imagining-Millennium-M...
[1] https://rougesfoam.blogspot.com
[2] https://www.rbmaradio.com/shows/adam-harpers-bubblebath (might need non-US proxy)
I prefer playing music that is more avant garde (within my abilities of course) even if it appeals to a smaller audience.
As the article mentions, this talk was given at the Donaueschingen Festival, so the audience almost certainly consisted mostly of fans of avant-garde contemporary classical music. If the author only mentions jazz or rock, or electronics only in passing, it's because he's primarily talking about the future of contemporary classical music, and in particular the future of the sort of highly-experimental classical music played at the Donaueschingen Festival, and probably not the future of music at large.
In this context, I think his question is a reasonable one. What will/should innovative classical music look like in the future? The article's suggestion seems to be that it should focus less on being radically experimental, and more on innovating in a way which is more deeply rooted in traditional techniques and more easily comprehensible to the listener. I suppose the question is, in light of what is now a long history of extreme musical experimentation, what does innovation look like in this more traditional context? I obviously don't have any answers, but I agree with the author that it would be nice to see more focus in this in the experimental classical music culture.
As an aside, this article has a lot of references to composers and pieces which will make it tough reading for someone not already familiar with avant-garde classical. That said, it does give a nice whirlwind overview of a lot of historical trends in this space, so if you're unfamiliar, but still sufficiently interested, you might use it as a quick reference for areas to listen to. Alex Ross' book "The Rest is Noise" is a good resource for a deeper look at the area.