This is in my opinion the main reason why current music is problematic: Without the tradition of playing for, and connecting with a small live audience with a honest and heartfelt musical performance all everyone can do is imitate, from the bedroom or practice room straight in front of cameras or put in front of a manufactured audience.
Playing a song straight up is no longer possible, so performers conjure a magical moment of connection with the audience (mixing the vocals to make them sound as if an audience was singing in unison, or Maroon 5 taking the shirt off at the Superbowl halftime show) or skipping any attempt at authenticity (at the same Superbowl, the rapper driving a car around the stage, just portraying an image).
My guitar skills are quite limited, but lately I found a potential audience: should my neighbors recruit me as a babysitter for their little child, I'm going to see how my children's songs are going to work out for her. I can't imagine anything but the wildest success :-)
Outside of a few big names and events like the superbowl, that's alive and well. I can go to small local concerts more nights of the year than I care for, lots of people play in bands or instruments on their own for fun, ...
You really should edit "current music" to "current mainstream music"
There are fantastic things going on all over, people really trying to reach out & put about their own little niche scenes all over the place. In fact I had a psych band from Japan stay at mine just the other week, as they were trying to keep the costs down.
It really isn't hard to find these local scenes or the smaller more intement gigs with sites like bandcamp.
The problem that I'm describing is affecing all music: performers don't get to try out their songs in a 'natural' setting nearly as often as they used to. Music is done in the basement or in the practice room, not in the living room. Music is performed in niche scenes, not bars or dance venues with the general public attending.
I briefly googled 'psych band from japan' and saw a certain kind of photography: jaded, melancholic people on artsy album covers. The kind that I see on many event posters or in music magazines. Not terrible, but showing how disconnected music is from the real world, living in art-space.
By all means I'm not saying it's bad, and I might give it a listen.
Still, I'm going to polish up my guitar chords and maybe compose a song for my little neighbor. The way it's been done throughout human history.
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Playing a song straight up is no longer possible, so performers conjure a magical moment of connection with the audience (mixing the vocals to make them sound as if an audience was singing in unison, or Maroon 5 taking the shirt off at the Superbowl halftime show) or skipping any attempt at authenticity (at the same Superbowl, the rapper driving a car around the stage, just portraying an image).
My guitar skills are quite limited, but lately I found a potential audience: should my neighbors recruit me as a babysitter for their little child, I'm going to see how my children's songs are going to work out for her. I can't imagine anything but the wildest success :-)