There's beginning of an understanding, I think, that rock music is the jazz of the 21st century. There will be many great records made, no doubt, but rock and roll will never occupy the same position it did, at the centre of pop culture, again. There's a flavour of that in the piece. But the article misses another crucial (and immediate) reason for the decline of rock and roll. Pop/rock/whatever is in decline because it is based on affluence - young people with disposable income and free time. Young people don't have these things anymore.
The article is also another interesting example of the strange conclusions people, ostensibly left-wing, can reach once they accept traditional notions of artistic value. Example:
Savage thinks rock's ongoing prosaicness is symptomatic of a wider cultural shift. "There's a current mode of solipsism, where you don't want to be challenged, you just want to have your own life reflected back at you. It's down to the way the internet has grown up, the whole apparent democratisation of the idea of skill – that skill and experience don't matter and that you're as good as anyone else. There's the disastrous impact of reality shows, the whole impulse to be famous, the idea that fame is the way to go."
Leave aside the obvious point about fame being a post-religious paradise on Earth; isn't it odd that we should regret the democratisation of culture? The author adds the caveat 'apparent'; 'apparent' is probably a twinge of doubt in the author's mind: do I really oppose democracy? Modern popular culture is, in the main, anti-democratic. This can't be stressed enough.