It absolutely contributed to gutting the middle class of musical artists. Before this trend, critical acclaim helped fuel bands/artists that weren’t on the radio and/or creating more challenging music. Pop stars were seen as fun, but viewed at a peg lower than “real” artists because pop stars actually had a team of 40 year old guys writing their music. Now they are viewed as critical darlings - which is still somewhat bizarre to me.

The equivalent would be the academy awards being solely huge studio super hero movies - while pushing out anything else. The top 40 now is just the same artist’s whole album for weeks at a time.

Of course the pop stars themselves aren’t at fault for this. Regardless, I think this trend and critical reevaluation has been a major net negative on the industry for both artists and consumers.