I tend to agree, for me the music died sometime around 2000 with the post-90s hangover of facing "reality" with 9/11 and consolidation of radio station ownership. In my city, we simply don't have any real radio stations. The only play top 40 and a pittance of alternative music, mostly from over 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, my Discover Weekly in Spotify and the channels spun from those artists have many thousands of songs that are considerably better than anything on the radio, but will never get airtime.

Here's a good example of what a real radio station would sound like today if we still had DJs and the freedom to play anything:

https://radioparadise.com/player

I asked Bill (the owner) 13 years ago about opening a station in my town to simply play his stream on FM but he broke the news to me that it's not really possible. It would cost something like $100,000 dollars (probably $250,000 today) just to get the license.

I also got the feeling that it would be so expensive to operate (in electricity alone) that stations are no longer viable as self-sustaining entities. They make their money by cross-promotion of other stations and businesses under an umbrella corporation.

The only way to break up this stagnation is antitrust enforcement IMHO. Bring back the Broadcast Station Cross-Ownership Rule at the very least, then go further to also break up the big media duopolies like CNN/Fox News (which of course will not happen in these times):

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fccs-review-broadcast-o...

In 2017, the Commission eliminated PDF Download its rule that had previously prohibited common ownership of a full-power broadcast station and a daily newspaper if the station's contour (defined separately by type of station) completely encompassed the newspaper's city of publication and the station and newspaper were in the same relevant Nielsen market. At the same time, the Commission also eliminated the radio-television cross-ownership rule, which had restricted the common ownership of broadcast radio and television stations located in the same market. These two rules -- the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership and radio-television cross ownership rules -- were eliminated due in part to the growth in the number and variety of sources of entertainment, news and information in the modern media marketplace.

Yeah that's for most divergent thinking. In the art realm here's an example of Penny Arcade's Tycho talking about anti depressants and the usual lack of creativity that comes with them. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/09/bedeviled

Linkin Park's Bennington Talked numerous times about how his drug addictions helped him creatively despite him wanting to be sober. His later more sober songs kinds suck tbh.

The thoughts that come from drug tweaked brains are always slightly off. Sometimes though not usually, the thoughts are unique in a novel and attractive way. For creative thinking, dosing on something may be effective but I doubt it's healthy.

We have to be careful about romanticizing mental illness though. As a professional illustrator, I’ve seen more people spiral out of the field from mental illness than succeed because of some visionary ability that illness provided them.

There are of course brilliant artists who are nuts, many of whose work I admire. But most high-performing people I know seem to be pretty “normal” and disciplined.