I do see what you are saying but your methods just need to evolve with time, also as you have gotten older in theory you should have got to know yourself better in terms of what you do and don't like which should help streamline finding things.
The claim of sameness and that first article are moot points really because you are referring solely to popular music which is a small percentage of the overall music. Pop music has always been a bit boring and same-y by design, it is appealing to the broadest audience possible usually but your original response claimed music in general to not be interesting. Pop music ≠ all music.
In terms of finding new things then you need to put in some effort if you don't want to just rely on an algorithm.
Bandcamp have genre tags to explore, you can follow tags as well as artists and it will make recommendations based on what you are following everyday. They will also "spotlight" artists and such on a main front page that isn't affected by your followers which can help with discovering something some what removed from your current listening.
SoundCloud has similar genre tags but also lots of DJ shows of many different kinds. Listen through shows, take note of the tracks you like and then look up that artist, look at "similar artists", look for the record label that released something you like and explore their back catalogue.
Look on store fronts at their charts based on sales. Places like beatport or Juno etc often have top 10, 50, 100 within genres for the week or month or year. Have a scroll through them, have a listen. Again if you find something you like then go down the rabbit hole, try their other stuff out, look for artists the collabed with or would play shows with them etc etc.
Communities are everywhere no matter what social media you choose you can usually find music based discussion or sharing on such a granular level with specific sub genres and more obscure stuff often coming to the surface. There aren't many on Lemmy here yet that are super active but they are growing. If you love a particular genre then start a community here and by extension that'll help motivate you to find new things to post and start growing that community here.
Ultimately I don't think it is harder to find music it is just that the methods have changed as time goes on.
Don't write off all "modern music", you'll be missing out for sure :)
I do agree to some degree but the problem here is that you are relying too much on just "the algorithm" to serve you up new and interesting stuff. Whilst some times maybe it comes in clutch for the most part, like you say, it is trash.
You need to go out and put in a little bit of work listening to things in other places, following rabbit holes based common denominators or listening to DJ mixes / radio shows, hearing a song you like then going on a mission to find out what it was.
You say it is tedious but you have so many options these days to explore if you just put in a little effort. It used to be tedious as fuck buying a CD for £15 based on a cover or one song you heard on the radio only to find the majority of the music you hate and it was a waste of money!