about the music, there's no way to scientifically prove it, but music likely peaked between the 60s and the 90s. Look at the types of songs and groups we had back then vs now, the lyrics were much more complex and read like stories and we used real musical instruments, vs the fake computerized crap. I forgot who it was but someone once said the downturn of music can be traced back to when songs started to be written by multiple people rather than one person writing the song. That became much more common starting around 2000. Personally I much prefer singer songwriter musicians over people who sing and/or perform other people's written material.