In my day, we walked to school up hill… both ways… in the driving snow. 
I have a 15 year old daughter and your generalizations don’t apply, from what I’ve observed. I have given her access to music of her choosing, since she was very young. I am thankful that she became attached to bands early on and then quickly grew out them and onto something else (e.g. The Beatles, which I don’t really play, so not sure how that happened).
Today, she uses her Spotify account to listen on her phone (or our Sonos speakers). She has a huge collection of playlists that she uses to follow her favorite artists (right now, she’s stuck in a Hip-Hop phase) and she frequently stops me to listen to something new.
Music is not wallpaper for my kid… she listens to it much the same as I did when I was her age in 1979, except she gets to skip the OCD agony of a “stereo system” with vinyl and tape, with immediate access to everything at a touch of a button.