bands aren’t disappearing. Small local bands are still cheap and great fun. I know, i’m in one. We tour locally every year and play a show every weekend throughout summer. We have to turn people down because we are so booked up. And that’s not just us, but most locals i know. People still love live music just as much as they ever did.

Maybe it's the fact that it's so fucking expensive to do anything, forcing us inside which is reenforcing itself rather cyclically. It is really hard to get excited about things when you don't have the funds to go out and do things. I am older but would be going out way more to events if I didn't cringe at the money I know I will be dropping on these nights out. Third real world spaces are dearly needed and people are getting priced out of them. I used to go out to music events at least once a week ten years ago.

I wonder if how niche music tastes have become has something to do with it.

Probably; it feels like less that 'young people aren't excited by bands" and more like 'to be a band that takes off the way they used to, you gotta be doin something different'. I don't think anyone's exactly clamoring for bands to do the same shit as your average Seether, Incubus, or Three Days Grace expies. Meanwhile, you've got acts like Polyphia, Zeal and Ardor, and Ghost running around out here doing actively different shit and seeing payoff on it.