No, AutoTune and PT took marginal and non- "musicians" and made them radio stars. Oh, and Steve Jobs killed the radio.
Many people think that part about Jobs and the Internet, but pros in the business say the money was disappearing long before internet music services. And nowadays pros who were originally against it realize it saves many waning genres and many people “re-purchase” music when changing formats or online companies rather than deal with moving their electronic “colllection”.
And of course now we’re seeing it all move to subscription based “all you can eat” models anyway. Columbia House memberships, anyone? LOL!
As far as auto-tune and PT go, that’s only part of it. People don’t want to put the time and effort in to learn an instrument well or learn music theory to a level where they can compose well. You have to dig in the local live band scene to find high quality musicians.
Obviously there’s exceptions to that rule, and many small acts that get big hire a pile of excellent studio musicians to travel with them (Zac Brown is notable on this... solo artist grew to a huge band with top notch players), but really great players are not as easily noticed or picked up these days.
Why learn it when they can just push buttons and let the computer make mediocre music with the same boring chord progression?
It’s also nearly impossible (not completely impossible) to have a small band do something great, get heard locally and get airtime, go regional, then spread further organically with corporate producers doing everything and nobody local involved in what gets airtime (or internet time by being pushed into playlists). It happens but it’s really really slow.
One pro who’s stuff I watch says the modern equivalent of air play is getting on Spotify’s free song of the day type of stuff. Millions of plays instantly. He also says if the band handles that right they can make a few bucks off of the short lived peak in online plays, but online plays are pretty cheap.
He says most bands never made money on the music anyway, with all the cuts that were taken out of it, even in the heyday, and many bands would literally owe their record company so much money the label would trade them not paying it back for recording another album for free.
He says today if you want to really support a band, buy the music wherever, it doesn’t matter, and then buy their merch. Bands in almost all music deals get to keep most of, if not all, of the merch profits. They make a lot more money off of the hat, t-shirt, mug, or hoodie than selling music. There’s no writer, producer, or anyone else to share the cut with unless they hired an artist for logo work or whatever and most of those don’t work on percentage.
Oh and there’s also great artists who aren’t PC enough for record labels to back them... RIP Denver Joe...
http://www.westword.com/music/hey-denver-joe-5056770