They have made better by democratizing it and making more kinds of music accessible to more people on demand.
It‘s worse because music can be produced and uploaded by, at best, mediocre talent, and artists get paid a pittance. For every hundred songs, 3-5 might be “ok” and one or two are “keepers” if you’re lucky.
Gone are the days where bands have a string of bangers and albums loaded with great songs. A lot of music just seems to be thrown at the wall to see what sticks. There were a lot of downsides to major label controlled music industry, but they also made some great bands.
I don’t see it that way. To me, it seems that there is a lot more great music available, and it takes much less effort to find it. Mass-market music is lowest-common-denominator crap, but that became the case somewhere in the 90s and hasn’t changed since.
The sweet spot is to find artists who are popular on streaming services, but not nearly as popular as the heavily-marketed acts that fill stadiums. Then branch out from there. Maybe check out community playlists that don’t contain big name acts and add anything that resonates to your own lists to get started?