I agree with what you're saying - no surprise there :-D - but I do wonder if you may be misinterpreting him slightly.
I suspect he may be using a rather different definition of generation, not everybody in the last 30 years or so, but rather the contemporary group of teenagers/young people. The one thing that does seem to have changed in the last thirty/forty years or so is that popular culture is so much more aimed at young people than in the past.
It's not that the population as a whole has more control over their culture, but that young people own (or at least are the intended market for) popular culture. Instead of popular music being the kind that appeals to the largest number of people, it's actually a genre aimed at a specific age group. Are the latest chart topping "pop" songs actually more popular with the population as a whole than many traditional songs? I doubt it, but because young people "own" the output of the mass media, those songs are the ones to get the recognition.
It's highly debatable that the current generation of young people actually owns their own culture, for all the reasons you've already explained, but it does seem as if the mass media's idea of "what young people want" is a very strong influence on popular culture - young people making music for other young people.
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I suspect he may be using a rather different definition of generation, not everybody in the last 30 years or so, but rather the contemporary group of teenagers/young people. The one thing that does seem to have changed in the last thirty/forty years or so is that popular culture is so much more aimed at young people than in the past.
It's not that the population as a whole has more control over their culture, but that young people own (or at least are the intended market for) popular culture. Instead of popular music being the kind that appeals to the largest number of people, it's actually a genre aimed at a specific age group. Are the latest chart topping "pop" songs actually more popular with the population as a whole than many traditional songs? I doubt it, but because young people "own" the output of the mass media, those songs are the ones to get the recognition.
It's highly debatable that the current generation of young people actually owns their own culture, for all the reasons you've already explained, but it does seem as if the mass media's idea of "what young people want" is a very strong influence on popular culture - young people making music for other young people.