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.
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.