What has happened to music today!!

Although the music industry is worse than stale cheese, there's a lot of potential for musicians who play real instruments having "real talent", and yet incorporate some of the current "culture" into their own.
 
You can only saturate the market with whatever the current trends are (EDM, Dubstep, Looping, etc...) up to a point (everything's going to start sounding like everything else), and what will really shine through is hearing someone just playing an acoustic instrument while simply singing from the heart.   

craigb
Some more "new" stuff to try:
 
Republic Tigers - Keep Color (Alternative - Indie)
TransAtlantic (Progressive)
Freedom Hawk (Heavy Metal / Stoner Metal)
Toseland (Rock)
Tin Spirits (Progressive)
Poets of the Fall
 
No idea exactly what you're looking for, but there's some good stuff out there if you go looking for it.
 

I'll add;
 
Rival Sons (classic 4-piece rock)
Vintage Trouble (rock/soul)
 
..and the new Squeeze album is great stuff.

igiwigi
Dear All
... 
The other day I listened to the B side of the Small faces Ogden Nut Brown Flake and what a refreshing piece of Inventiveness.
...
on the American side I would say Chicago are one of the greatest USA bands,with lots of clever and enjoyable brass work.
 
...

Ohhh , yah got a few peeps here that know and love some different stuff.
 
Ogden's is magnificent, beginning to end ... and the first 3 Chicago albums are all a must have for most serious music collectors.
 

jbow
...
 feel for new artists, it is like everything good has been done. Artists 1969-71 just hogged pretty much all the good stuff. LOL.
...

 
I still believe that the main reason for it, was all a part of the anti-establishment thing, and the desire to not give in to the commercial and enslaving side of things out there. The freedom, helped define a lot of music, and the one thing today, is the lack of freedom ... even though it is all available ... it's being known or heard is almost a joke for all our friends around us ... my neighbor at work likes music ... but you know how many comments he has made about anything I gave him? ...only one ... Yes -- Close to the Edge ... wow ... what a discovery!
 
I ended up telling him, no more music from me ... he goes why? You have not heard anything, and the music I gave you mattered to me and my life. You can't see that or appreciate that. You have exhausted my desire to give you music! He apologized and next day he talks about Jethro Tull ... these folks, sad or not, are so commercialized that listening to something different is impossible ... they will not get it, or find a thread in it that helps them learn something about listening. 
 
It's not sad, per se ... but it is the society that we're in and vote for ... more of the same! The same old ugly codgers for office. The same old codgers for music. The same folks for top ten ... different boobs this time under a different top, or nearly no top, which ever is the case. I guess it doesn't say much about the cover of the Blind Faith album, does it?

craigb
...
TransAtlantic (Progressive)
...

 
Their one piece with Jon Anderson doing Pt 1 of TFTO, is absolutely magnificent ... and even more amazing is watching a drummer, actually drum, and stick to it! 
 

I recently ran into Fuel which is like a mashup of Live and Alice In Chains.  Really good stuff (if you're into that style).

igiwigi
on the American side I would say Chicago are one of the greatest USA bands,with lots of clever and enjoyable brass work.

 
Have you ever heard the Canadian band "Lighthouse"? They are from the 70's and very similar to Chicago in many ways - including the horn section. If you haven't it would be "new" to you even if it isn't recently recorded. "One Fine Morning" would be a good place to start.... follow it up with "Pretty Lady" and "Sunny Days" then take it from there.
 

Rain
... a lot of the new bands I would listen to are actually recreating what was done in the past - they sound and even look like transplants form the 70s. That's fine but personally, I don't need new pseudo-old music.

For me a good song is a good song, and a good sound is a good sound. I don't care when it was actually done. Your a transplanted Canadian.... have you listened to Saskatoon's "The Sheepdogs". It's a 70's sound that is really quite refreshing - IMO.
 
Sheepdogs - I Don't Know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvCq2hmlasM
 
 

As the populace gets dumber, so do the things they do.

ampfixer
I remember the first Van Halen record came out and I told my pals "this will never amount to anything". Ya, right.

I felt so differently when I first heard it... as a 13 year old it was such a breath of fresh air compared to the disco that was ruling the airwaves at that time. 6-7 months later Dire Straits came out with their debut - it was an exciting time for a young guitar player still trying to form an F chord.

I'll challenge the old "musical tastes are carved in stone at a young age" theory. And I'll go as far as to suggest that we truly are currently at a low point in the musical landscape.
 
Most of my favorite music is stuff that came along long after my impressionable years. Yes, I still enjoy classical music and traditional jazz and 70's prog as much as I did when I was young. Even more so now, because I hear more in it that would have gone over my head back then.
 
But I also like folksy stuff that I would have dismissed when I was in my 20's. I am a late-blooming Rush fan. I enjoy (some) modern Country when it doesn't try to be formulaic. I even appreciate some of the 80's hair bands now.  I listen to a nightly radio program that features all blues, discovering that that genre has a whole lot more creativity going on than I once presumed. Ditto for Big Band and Swing.
 
My musical palette literally spans more decades than I have been alive. And most of it discovered (ior re-discoverd) during my adult years.
 
But the last 10 years have contributed very little. It all seems terribly derivative now. When Kanye West is hailed as a genius, it would seem the world's drunk some kind of mind-numbing kool-aid. 

McMusic? 

For some reason, people keeping saying that one part of my body is smart...

bitflipper
. And I'll go as far as to suggest that we truly are currently at a low point in the musical landscape.
 

 
Being from the UK, and taking Simon 'Beelzebub' Cowell into account, I'd have to say that it couldn't ever get any lower than the chart domination in the '80's by producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman.
 
 
 

Or when you actually read the lyrics to Future and Drake's "Where Ya At" little ditty.  And you have to...because you sure as heck can't understand them when mumbled by Future.  Street "poetry" my rusty red arse.