Given the current tools available to compose, arrange, play, mix and master, one would expect the music created to improve.
It hasn't for a few reasons (observations) IMO.
One, today's pop music (for the last several years) has been simplified and homogenized to a great extent, and reliance on "perfection tools" (e.g., autotune, quantizing, stems, etc.) takes some of the "life" out of the music, and it is spreading to other non-pop genres. This creates an audience looking for consistency, accuracy in music that fits a narrow formula (or set of formulae) for different genres, and it's risky to deviate since profits on music are less than on produce at the grocery store, with few exceptions. (Swift or Beyonce, for example, can experiment and still be assured of good sales and profits though less than staying on their most well known formula).
This homogenization of music isn't limited to pop, all genres are suffering from it, some to lesser or greater extent.
This also allows musicians to become lazy, because any errors or shortcomings can be easily fixed; few strive for improvement because the effort isn't worth the results. It's unnecessary, and actually counterproductive. Those who do strive for perfection or new musical direction, as always, will find themselves in a niche market that is not sustainable financially (Allan Holdsworth comes to mind; if he had listened to EVH and created one pop-ish / mainstream record, he could have had more money to do more of what he wanted musically).
There are musicians that pushing music forward, and as always they are in the minority, but with today's homogenization they get lost in the sea of music that is being created and uploaded.
While I don't like the curator model of the past when record companies controlled who was offered a contract, and who they invested in, today it's the opposite outside of mainstream, no one is curating so you have volumes of music to wade through to find something of value, who has time for that. In the past there were some good curators of music at the record companies, because they were either musicians themselves or were devoted music fans themselves and could balance their knowledge and love of music with the profits. Now, everything record companies do are curated for profit.
I'm always looking for new and different music, and I'm one of the few Polyphia fans here, I saw them live last September because they came to town nearby. I'm finding I'm looking into the past more and more, from pop and rock music of the past, to Bach's organ works (pipe organ music is one of my favs, and I even have a digital pipe organ at home), to prog rock and prog metal, fusion (Holdsworth), and older thrash, death and hair metal, for inspiration.
TL;DR; the tools are there to make better music, but few musicians are using them effectively to innovate and create new, amazing, technical, competent, interesting, inspiring music.
My home pipe organ (one of four organs I have, I recently sold my '62 Hammond A-102 and matching Leslie 142 )
