the problem with modern day music

I'm not reactionary, I've just heard about a new band called Jethro Tull... 

There was  no mention of progressive music in the original post. It's about music in general. 

I kinda agree with what you say there. People in general don't listen to music out of their comfort zone. I am as much of an outsider today as I was when i was a teenager. 

The simple answer to the question “what chance has progressive rock got with the youth today” is it has a good chance. And, as others have said, most probably a better chance today than it had ten or twenty, and definitely thirty or forty years ago. The sheer availability of music, and the way it is shared between people through Spotify recommendations, YouTube videos, TikTok, whatever other social media the youth of today are using, means they are more likely to come across and enjoy prog.

I don’t know a lot of the youth of today, so I can only go from my experience of what my teenage daughter and her friends listen to - and it is pretty much anything and everything. I don’t even know how she finds half of what she listens to, and I am completely surprised by a lot of it. She and her friends don’t really have any preference by era or genre, and often don’t even seem to have any knowledge of the era or genre of what they are listening to. I have heard them listening to music from every decade from the ‘60s to the present day, from pop, rock. metal, hip hop, trip hop, disco, funk, r&b, punk, and well, pretty much (as I’ve already said) anything and everything. They may not know they are listening to what we might call prog at times, and have probably never heard the word, but they certainly listen to some prog in amongst their eclectic mix.

When I was her age, I was limited to what I heard on the radio or tv, and unless you’re going to count the likes of Bowie and Queen as prog, then I never heard any prog on the radio. But my daughter and her friends come upon it surprisingly often. And they like it when they hear it.

I dont quite agree, cause another argument i put forth was, early millennials ,Gen X and baby boomers, had to buy every piece of music they wanted to be able to listen to at will, there was no youtube and spotify for us, so this meant that we were more willing to listen to every music we had in heavy rotation, because we had less of it, and what we did have we spent our hard earned money on, so understandable cause and effect.

I think this shaped our appreciation of music more to be more dedicated listeners because of this.    Yes i agree that the youth of today have more access to more music than ever before and this makes them luckier.   But please see my argument here too.

I understand your argument. I simply don’t agree with it. As Lewian posted, it was still possible to hear a wide range of music without buying it. We listened to the music that we bought, but also to the music from the collections of our friends, and of our siblings, and of our friends’ siblings, etc. We dubbed each other’s albums onto tape, and we made mistakes.

And then, just as now, not everyone was a dedicated music listener. Sure, there were some, but in my youth (in the 80s and 90s) we were a definite minority. I think you are overstating how many listeners of music then were dedicated listeners, and woefully underestimating how many listeners of music are dedicated listeners in their own way. It may not be the same way, but that doesn’t mean they are any less dedicated. Sure there are plenty of passive listeners, for whom music is simply something in the background while they do something else - but you surely can’t think that there weren’t just as many such listeners in the pre-internet days, because surely there were.

Oh, and I just remembered one more way that the youth of today might discover prog, and that is the almighty Shazam. Hear something on tv in an ad or film or program, or playing while you’re in a shop or restaurant, and want to know what it is? Shazam it. Instant discovery of something new to listen to. And prog songs definitely do get played in the soundtracks for tv programs and films.

^  good observation