Tons of reasons I'm sure. Pretty interesting to think about.
1) Lots of rock fans graduated to metal when rock started stagnating. Rock stopped producing a lot of new styles and metal was more innovative in the 2000s and 2010s.
2) Less people are going to be learning to play music in general now. Back in the 90s, there were dozens of local bands playing all the time. People learning to play instruments, buying instruments, taking lessons, practicing with their bands in basements multiple days a week. Now, with the distractions of phones, internet, netflix, less people are going to devote time to playing drum rudiments, or learning chords for years on end when there is near infinite distraction available. Lots of people barely even socialize or have friends now. Less people learning to play means less bands. Less bands means less people going to concerts.
It then becomes easier for people with less skill to be successful musically because the standards are lowered, like people with minimal ability making manufactured songs with electronic tracks written by someone else.
3) No MTV. No rock radio playing music in a way that will catch casual audiences. Music listening has fully fragmented now into curated streaming lists. People will gravitate to easier genres like pop and dance. There isn't a pipeline to broadly expose people to rock music like MTV and rock radio did in the 90s.
4) There are no more subcultures. Know what a meme is? It's what normal people used to call an inside joke. Now everyone has the same jokes, the same exposure to everything, the same political protests, the same trending topics. With no subcultures, unique things cannot develop in isolation anymore unless they're completely underground and actively repel people like metal music does. So without subcultures developing uniquely, everyone will share the lowest common denominator culture - shallow pop / dance music, the same jokes, low quality movies.
5) Younger audiences like different music. 90s music fans hated 80s music. Same thing happening here. Everything goes in cycles.
Jooxed
. Motley Crue, Guns & Roses, Velvet Revolver, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, etc.
