Wait, which is it: that we no longer have a collective listening experience to enrich rock music, or that we no longer have a competition among diverse, idiosyncratic stations exposing us to varying DJ tastes? It seems like it'd need to be one or the other, if we're describing a macro phenomenon like "the death of rock".
You need both, without a shared experience you just end up with fragmentation not a cohesive genre. However, without organic discovery of new talent you lose touch with the underlying culture.
Payola is just part of the story. The finite number of large radio stations enforced a shared experience independent of what specifically was on air. The US used to regularly see new music genres become popular. From 1910’s there was Jazz, Blues, Swing, R&B, Rock, Disco, Rap, and Punk etc. Yet the last 20 years hasn’t seen the same kind of cohesive movements.
We are seeing fragmentation, yet we still have huge pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé with hundreds of millions of fans and massively popular tours.
Rock isn't entirely dead in the pop charts either.
The point they make in the article though is that with the death of the industry we no longer have a collective listening experience.
It's like the insane movie streaming world we live in now. Ever hear people these days around the water cooler?
Ann: "Been binge-watching Undersea Cable Warriors — amazing."
Bob: "Haven't seen it, me and the S.O. are hooked on The Harmonograph Mystery."
Carol: "Wow, Return to Topkapi was amazing. Anyone else see it?"
:
: