> "The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse"
As a musician myself, and as someone who enjoys watching music and music theory content on YouTube, I can't stand watching Rick Beato because of stuff like this. There certainly are valid criticisms to be made against the music industry, but those videos are like 90% ridiculous cherry-picked comparisons and vague, superficial justifications. It's low-quality nostalgia-driven engagement bait that's optimizing for clicks and comments.
I really like this video by 12tone addressing Beato's schtick about modern music [0]. 12tone is an example of someone who I consider produces much higher quality content than Beato, and obviously puts a ton of time and effort into the videos (writing scripts, drawing the visuals, recording and editing, and making moderately-clickbaity titles and thumbnails). But I'd guess it's probably a one-person operation.
In comparison, Beato's channel strikes me as low-effort content (pick a topic and spend an hour talking unscripted in front of a camera) with a ton of money spent on production, editing, and algorithm hyper-optimization to maximize ROI. It's such a straightforward case of something that would not exist without YouTube's monetization system that it's rather ironic for the parent to use it as an example otherwise.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODG4Xt45bU